Global unemployment rose by four million people last year to a total of 197 million, and another five million people are expected to raise the total to 202m this year, the International Labour Organisation said on Tuesday.

The figures indicate that in these two years alone nine million people would have joined the ranks of people officially registered as unemployed and that the cost so far of the financial crisis which began five years ago is an extra 28 million people officially without jobs. “This figure means that today there are 28m more unemployed people around the world than they were in 2007,” before the crisis, ILO chief Guy Ryder told reporters in Geneva on Monday.

Last year's unemployment number inched up towards the all-time record of 199m reached at the epicentre of the crisis in 2009, but “we will beat that record in 2013”, an expert for the ILO, which is the labour arm of the United Nations, said. Another 5.1 million people are expected to join the jobless ranks this year, bringing the total number to more than 202. That number is expected to rise by another three million in 2014 and should hit 210.6m by 2017, ILO said, adding that the global unemployment rate was expected to stay steady at 6.0 per cent until then.

However, analysts often point out that official unemployment data reflects those people who satisfy the conditions for being registered as unemployed, and that official data does not necessarily capture large numbers of people who would like to have officially registered work but do not feature in any statistics.—AFP