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From America to Africa, unemployment rates around the globe continue to climb. Where is it a problem and who is suffering the most? The answers to these two questions and more on today's episode of Down to Business English.
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Dez: Hello everyone this is Dez Morgan here coming to you from Abu Dhabi.
Skip: And this is Skip Montreux reporting from Tokyo, Japan. And you are listening to an all new episode of Down to Business English.
Dez: I’d like to wish all of our listeners a happy and prosperous 2012.
Skip: Yes, Happy New Year to everyone and of course to you Dez.
Dez: Thanks Skip and a happy new year to you too. Did you make any new year’s resolutions this year and then break them already?
Skip: Funny you should ask. I did resolve to cut down on my smoking and I even managed to quit for a little while.
Dez: Well done.
Skip: Well I have been worried about my health for some time now. And on top of that, here in Japan cigarette prices have been on the rise, so there is a financial incentive as well to cut down or quit.
Dez: Did you know that in a recent BBC survey, conducted in 23 different countries on what people worry about, rising inflation was the third most talked about topic.
Skip: Really? What other topics were people worried about?
Dez: Well the most talked about was corruption, then poverty, followed by unemployment and rising costs in joint third place. The interesting point though was that unemployment was the fastest growing worry with 18% of people saying they worried about it compared to only 3% when the survey started in 2009.
Skip: With the world economies the way they are at the moment I can see why people are worried by unemployment.
Dez: Being unemployed again is certainly something that worries me.
Skip: You are not alone. And that is our topic for today, so let’s do it lets get D2B...Down to Business with Unemployment: Where is it a problem and who is suffering the most?
Skip: So Dez let’s tackle the first of those questions. Where is unemployment seen as a particularly large problem?
Dez: According to the survey, Spain came in the highest with 54% of respondents expressing concern about the employment market.
Skip: Hardly a surprise I guess as Spain is pretty much at the heart of the European debt crisis with very high youth unemployment.
Dez: Would you believe the figure of 40% for those under 25?
Skip: I didn’t realize it was that bad but yes I can believe that figure.
Dez: And other countries where unemployment was perceived as a problem were Ghana, Nigeria, Mexico and Turkey.
Skip: Really, I would have expected unemployment to be an issue in Ghana and Nigeria but I am a little surprised by the inclusion of Turkey on that list.
Dez: I was a bit too but unemployment spiked by almost a third in 2009 to just over 14% recovering a little in 2010 when it fell to just less than 12% which is still higher than any other year in the past 30.
Skip: Dez, I know that you took a trip home to the UK over the holidays. How is the unemployment situation looking over there?
Dez: Well it’s not good to be honest. The current rate is 8.3% and that is the manipulated figure published by the government. It’s anybodies guess what the real figure must be.
Skip: 10% plus would seem likely.
Dez: Even the government admits that this figure is not getting any better and are predicting a figure of 8.8% in 2012.
Skip: I guess that is part of the reason for the riots that took place last year across British cities.
Dez: It certainly was a factor. The reported figure for youth unemployment is currently running at over 20% nationally which of course means that it’s far worse in economically depressed areas.
Skip: Japan compares relatively well to those figures with an overall reported rate of just 4.9% and a youth rate of 10.9% as reported by the Wall Street Journal in 2010.
Dez: Are those figures reliable?
Skip: Like all governments, the Japanese try to under report unemployment but things have certainly gotten worse since the downturn in 2009 and the Tsunami of course.
Dez: As I recall the Japanese labour market has always been less flexible than what we are accustomed to in the West.
Skip: That is true, Japanese companies prefer to hire new employees as they graduate from university which means that any young person graduating into difficult economic times will find it increasingly difficult to find a full time position as time goes by.
Dez: The situation in the UK is somewhat different. The online recruiter Totaljobs records the number of applicants for available positions and then analyses the figures by area and by sector.
Skip: And what did they discover?
Dez: Well, they report that the situation is the worst in Scotland where the number of applicants for each position has risen by 50% since 2010 and that technically unskilled sectors like retail, secretarial and service jobs had the greatest number of applicants with all scoring somewhere in the 40s.
Skip: You mean 40 people applied for each job?
Dez: Yes, that's right. And in London it was even worse with over 60 applicants for each secretarial post advertised.
Skip: And what about for technical jobs?
Dez: There is an increase in jobs in the engineering, aerospace and oil and gas industries but these require specialist technical skills which it seems not a lot of applicants currently have.
Skip: Anyone starting university would probably be better advised to take a geology class rather than drama.
Dez: That would seem to be the case. Before we close though there is one country where unemployment seems to be improving and that is.........?
Skip: I know this one, the US. Unemployment fell to a 2½ year low last November according to the Department of Labour, and a few other indicators have trended up as well. Manufacturing activity rose at the end of 2011 as did consumer confidence suggesting the US economy will grow by 2 to 2½% this year.
Dez: Should make for an interesting election year.
Skip: It most certainly should. And now it is time for us to get D2V...Down to Vocabulary.
Dez: I will start things off with the noun resolution and the connected verb to resolve. In the story I asked Skip if he had made any New Year’s resolutions which are bad habits that he has that he would like to change or resolve in some way.
Skip: So to resolve some problem would be to correct or solve it. A further example would be when I have a computer problem at work I have to contact the IT Department to resolve it for me.
Dez: That’s been happening a lot to me recently.
Skip: Me too. Moving on I have a further noun incentive which means a reward or bonus given to someone when they complete an action successfully. In the story I talk about the money I will save or the financial incentive of giving up smoking.
Dez: Another common example is in the car industry when a new model is released there are a lot of incentives to buy the last stock in the earlier model, like free insurance or some free upgrades.
Skip: A similar thing happens with computers.
Dez: Yeah, all technology really. Now next I have a verb for you, to spike which means when something increases rapidly. In the story I talk about how unemployment in Turkey went up rapidly or spiked in 2009.
Skip: Sales of iPhones spiked last year when Apple introduced the 4s model.
Dez: Sales of anything Apple spike when you go anywhere near one of their shops.
Skip: That’s right. Just look what happened in China recently when Apple released the 4s.
Dez: Yes, that was not pretty.
Skip: Getting back to vocabulary I have the verb to manipulate which means to adapt or change some figures or events to make the outcome more favorable. In the story Dez talks about how governments manipulate unemployment figures so that they appear to be lower than they really are.
Dez: You can manipulate people too. A skillful manager is able to manipulate staff into doing whatever it is that he or she wants them to do.
Skip: Children are pretty good at that too. Now I have the noun recruiter and the connected verb to recruit. A recruiter is the person or company that is employed to find or recruit staff for another company that doesn’t want to do it directly.
Dez: Also known more casually as a head hunter but a head hunter is usually for pretty senior positions whereas a recruiter refers to any type of employment. The largest recruiter in Japan is unsurprisingly called....?
Skip: Manpower Japan.
Dez: No Skip the other one.
Skip: Oh, you mean Recruit?
Dez: I do. My last word is the adjective aerospace which is used to describe the industry that designs and builds aeroplanes, missiles, spacecraft in fact anything that flies. In the story I say that the aerospace industry is one of the few that has increased employment opportunities.
Skip: The aerospace industry is a big money maker in the US with companies like Boeing, Lockheed and McDonald Douglas to name just a few of the companies in this sector.
Dez: Just a few indeed.
Skip: And finally I have the noun geology and the associated person geologist. Geology is the study of the ground and the mineral resources that are contained there and a geologist is the person who studies it. In the story I said that young people would be advised to study something technical like geology if they want to get a good job.
Dez: Did you know that with the mining and oil industries doing so well at the moment there is a world shortage of geologists?
Skip: Coming from Canada yes, I did know that actually.
Dez: And that rounds off the vocabulary for today.
Skip: Thanks for all that information Dez.
Dez: You are more than welcome Skip. I hope everyone listening found it interesting. Don’t forget to check out the audio script on the website at downtobusinessenglish.com. Once more, that’s downtobusinessenglish.com .
Skip: Yes, the audio script is a great study tool. And while you are visiting the website, please consider signing up for the Down to Business English Newsletter. Our main objective here at D2B is to help you improve your Business English skills. Joining the Newsletter, will help us do that even more effectively.
Dez: The Newsletter not only provides updates to some of the stories we cover here on D2B, but we also answer questions sent in by listeners regarding other vocabulary and phrases we don’t cover in the D2V section. It really is a great compliment to the podcast.
Skip: I second that. Thanks for listening everyone. See you next time.
Dez: Bye for now.
