THE United Nations’ labour agency, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), says the weak global economy is “strangling” job creation in the Caribbean and other places.

In its annual outlook, “Global Employment Trends 2014,” the ILO said employment is not expanding sufficiently fast to keep up with the growing labour force, calling for “job-friendly macroeconomic policies” and a greater attention to labour market and social policies.

Global unemployment rose by five million people in 2013; and, if the trend continues, will rise by a further 13 million people by 2018, the ILO said.

It said Latin America and the Caribbean added fewer than 50,000 additional unemployed people to the global number, or around a per cent of the total increase last year.

“On the basis of current macroeconomic projections, the ILO expects little improvement in the global labour market in 2014, with the global unemployment rate ticking up to 6.1 per cent,” the UN agency reported.

It said young people are particularly affected by the “weak and uneven recovery” with 74.5 million people between the ages of 15 and 24 unemployed last year. That figure is one million higher than in 2012.

Among the concerns is that jobseekers out of work for long periods lose their skills at an accelerated pace, making it much harder for them to find alternative employment at a similar occupation or skill level.

The ILO said the number of working poor is down but falling at a slower rate than in previous years.

“The report finds that those economic improvements will not be sufficient to absorb the major labour market imbalances that built up in recent years,” said Raymond Torres, director of ILO’s Research Department, in the foreword to the report. “The root causes of the global crisis have not been properly tackled.

“Over the foreseeable future, the world economy will probably grow less than was the case before the global crisis,” he added. “This complicates the task of generating the over 42 million jobs that are needed every year in order to meet the growing number of new entrants in the labour market.”