The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has said the economic crisis added 15 million people to the total out of work in industrialised countries in the past 20 months. It also warned that unemployment would rise more quickly next year.
The rate could jump to a post World War II high of 10%, the OECD said, despite signs of economic recovery.
The OECD said that government measures to support employment had helped, but also warned that if they became permanent they could turn into an obstruction to recovery.
It said particular attention had to be given to preventing the risk of a 'lost generation' of young people, trapped in long-term unemployment.
The unemployment rate in the 30 OECD industrialised economies has already reached 8.5%, a post-war record. This meant that 15 million workers have lost their jobs since the end of 2007, the OECD said.
But in a report earlier this week, the OECD disclosed that the 8.5% rate, recorded in June, stayed steady in July. Nevertheless, a new employment outlook survey from the body forecast that if an emerging economic recovery 'fails to gain momentum, the OECD unemployment rate could even approach a new post-war high of 10%, with 57 million out of work'
The OECD said governments had to 'urgently re-assess and adapt their labour market and social policies in order to prevent people from falling into the trap of long-term unemployment'.
Social safety nets to prevent the unemployed from falling into poverty should be strengthened, the OECD said. In the OECD area, 37% of people in households where no-one had a job lived in poverty. This was five times higher than for households in which at least one person had a job.
The OECD said governments should increase spending to help people to obtain training and to look for work. Although such spending in some countries had risen, the increase was small compared to the acceleration of unemployment. And in the US, Spain and Ireland, where OECD unemployment had risen the fastest, such spending per unemployed person had fallen by 40% in a year.
