Global unemployment 'stable' in 2026

The global unemployment rate is expected to hold steady in 2026, the United Nations said Wednesday, but cautioned the labour market's seeming stability belies a dire shortage of decent jobs.

The UN's International Labour Organization said the global economy and labour market appeared to have weathered recent economic shocks better than expected.

But the ILO warned that efforts to improve global job quality had stagnated, leaving hundreds of millions of workers wallowing in poverty, even as trade uncertainty risked cutting into workers wages.

The global unemployment rate was estimated at 4.9 percent last year and the year before, and is now projected to remain at a similar level until 2027, a report from the UN labour agency said.

That amounts to 186 million people out of work this year, it said.

"Global labour markets look stable, but that stability is quite fragile," Caroline Fredrickson, head of the ILO's research department, told reporters, cautioning that the "apparent calm masks deeper and unresolved problems".

At a time when US President Donald Trump has slapped towering tariffs on friends and foes alike, the report cautioned that "disruptions caused by trade uncertainty, combined with ongoing long-term transformations in global trade, could significantly affect labour market outcomes".

Going forward, the ILO said its modelling suggested that a moderate increase in trade policy uncertainty "may reduce returns to labour and, as a consequence, real wages for both skilled and unskilled workers across all sectors", especially in Southeast Asia, Southern Asia and Europe.

The potential of trade to generate new employment opportunities was also being challenged by the ongoing disruptions, the report said, pointing out that 465 million jobs globally depended on foreign demand through exports of goods and services and related supply chains in 2024.