UN Labor Agency Reports More Than 200 Million Jobless Last Year

UN Labor Agency Reports More Than 200 Million Jobless Last Year.

A man begs on the street as people walk past him in Pamplona, northern Spain on Friday, Jan. 3, 2014. Quarterly unemployment surveys, seen as more accurate by economists, show that Spain’s unemployment rate was 26 percent in the third quarter, with 6 million people jobless. The rate is the second highest in the 28-country European Union after Greece. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

GENEVA— The United Nations’ labor agency says the number of unemployed people around the world rose above 200 million last year as job opportunities failed to grow at the same pace as the global workforce.

The International Labor Organization said Monday that an estimated 201.8 million people were unemployed in 2013. That’s 4.9 million more than the previous year.

An annual ILO report points to an uneven global economic recovery and says East and South Asia together accounted for more than 45 percent of last year’s increase.

The agency puts last year’s global unemployment rate at 6 percent, unchanged from 2012. It says it expects little improvement this year, projecting that the jobless rate will edge up to 6.1 percent and the number of unemployed will rise another 4.2 million.