Your Money or Your Life!

16/YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!

some 2 5 million ] obs in the United States, that is between one and two
million jobs per year for the next 15 to 20 years'. The same issue goes
on to quote the head of a consulting firm: 'We know how to explain
job loss but are unable to see where jobs will be created.'

In the Former Eastern Bloc Countries

Unemployment has skyrocketed since the beginning of the 1990s.

World Bank officials prescribe a necessary unemployment rate of 20

per cent for these countries. Indeed, at an April 1992 seminar held

in Turin on the Eastern European adjustment, one of the two World

Bank representatives presented the following hypothesis: '[perhaps

we should] judge our success in achieving adjustments in Central

and Eastern Europe by the extent to which unemployment rises

rather than by the extent to which we [are] able to keep unemploy­

ment down' (George and Sabelli, 1994).

In late 1994-early 1995 the number of officially unemployed in

the Russian Federation was 1.69 million, but the real situation is

actually much worse. Based on different press and trade union

sources, Jean-Marie Chauvier has calculated that in early 1995

almost 12 million workers were unemployed, or 15.4 per cent of the

active population (Chauvier, 1995, unpublished). The World Bank

representatives' fondest wishes may yet be fulfilled!

In the Third World

Official figures systematically understate the reality of unemploy­

ment. Our calculations reveal that somewhere in the vicinity of 1

billion j obs would have to be created to ensure properly paid work for

all. The implementation of structural adjustment programmes has

led to a steep increase in unemployment for a number of reasons.

First, there have been mass dismissals in the public sector. Second,

the domestic market has been sharply cut back, leading to

bankruptcy for many companies. In 1995 in Mexico, for example,

following the December 1994 crisis, 850,000 jobs were eliminated

(Toussaint, 1996c). Third, export-oriented policies in agriculture

have hit subsistence farming hard, accelerating the rural exodus of

huge numbers of the unemployed to the cities.

Millions of jobs have been lost as a result of the Southeast Asian

crisis that began in 19 9 7. It is estimated that, in 19 9 8, 3 million j obs