ABSTRACT
Nearly one-third of the labour force in the OECD is currently unemployed. Globally, official unemployment reached its highest recorded levels in 2003 at 185.9 million.1 Besides unemployment, there is massive underemployment, a condition that many nations have identified in one way or another with catchy colloquialisms:
(France);
In recent years, electoral platforms that have prioritized strategies to overcome high levels of unemployment and underemployment have resulted in success. These successes include Jean Chrétien’s Liberal party in the 1993 Canadian elections; Gerhard Schröeder’s 1998 Social Democrats and Angela Merkel’s 2005 Christian Democratic Union in Germany; Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s 2002 Workers’ Party victory in Brazil; and Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 Union for a Popular Movement victory in France. All of these political parties spent their campaigns talking about the employment issue; none of their victories solved the problem of unemployment and underemployment.
