Jobs and Incomes in a Globalizing World

The consequences of globalizations, particularly for employment, wages, and incomes, arouse widespread concern. This book investigates the basis for these anxieties by analysing the effects of the growing two-way trade in manufactures between North and South – the core of globalization. Its conclusions set fresh parameters for the globalization debate. Presenting results of new research, the author shows that, contrary to popular perceptions, global income inequality is actually declining, South-North migration is falling, and job opportunities and wages are rising in a significant number of developing countries. Moreover, the author finds no evidence of falling labour standards in integrating economies, nor that globalization can be blamed for the labour market disadvantages of low-skilled labour in industrialized countries. While showing many of the public concerns about globalization to be unfounded, the analysis exposes other serious problems that until now have received scant attention, such as increasing marginalization of the poorest countries heavily dependent on exports of primary commodities, a high and growing level of brain drain from poor to rich countries, the potentially high costs for developing countries of pursuing integration as an objective in itself, and the failure of globalization to stimulate global economic growth. This important book points to difficult challenges that the international community must meet if the potential benefits of globalization are to be realized and all nations and people are to share in them.

Ajit K. Ghose is Senior Economist in the Employment Strategy Department of the ILO.