《2024全球就业与社会展望》

 World Employment and Social Outlook: September 2024 Update 1   The labour income share is a widely used measure of inequality which measures the proportion of total income in a country that employed people earn by working. This share declined globally by 0.6 percentage points between 2019 and 2022 and has since remained flat. Although this trend is consistent with the longer-term observed decline (1.6 percentage points between 2004 and 2024), nearly 40 per cent of the total decline observed over the past two decades occurred during the three years marked by the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020-22. ● While the decrease appears modest in terms of percentage points, in 2024 it represents an annual shortfall in labour income of $2.4 trillion (in constant PPP) compared to what workers would have earned had the labour income share remained stable since 2004.  Amongst other factors, economic studies have identified technology as a key driver of declines in the labour income share. Recent developments in the artificial intelligence (AI) field make it particularly relevant to analyse the relationship between technological innovations and the labour income share. Across a sample of 36 countries with the required data, composed of mostly advanced economies, technological innovations over the past two decades are found to produce persistent increases in labour productivity and output, however they can also reduce the labour income share. The evidence presented suggests that automation-oriented technological progress could be contributing to labour income share declines. ● If historical patterns were to persist, absent a stronger policy response across a wide range of relevant domains, the recent breakthroughs in generative AI could exert further downward pressure on the labour income share. This is not a prediction about AI effects. Rather, the finding highlights the importance of ensuring that any benefits of AI are widely distributed.  The global incidence of youth not in employment, education, or training (NEET) has seen only a modest decline since 2015, falling from 21.3 per cent to 20.4 per cent in 2024. The Arab States region has the highest incidence of youth NEET, at 33.3 per cent, followed by Africa (23.3 per cent), Asia and the Pacific (20.4 per cent), Latin America and the Caribbean (19.6 per cent), Europe and Central Asia (13.0 per cent), and Northern America (11.2 per cent). The regions with the lowest initial NEET rates experienced sizeable declines. In contrast, the Arab States region registered only a modest decline, while Africa has shown no progress in reducing the incidence of NEET over the last two decades. ● NEET estimates show that large gender inequalities remain in young people’s access to education and employment, although there has been moderate progress in reducing gender gaps over the past two decades. The female youth NEET incidence is estimated at 28.2 per cent in 2024, more than double the incidence among young men