Most long-term employment forecasts indicate that rates of growth higher than the trend since 1974 are required to restore full employment. This means that under current scenarios, growth will not be sufficient to cure Europe's endemic employment ills, reverse the decline in real US incomes, halt the spread of poverty and underemployment in developing countries or prevent the marginalization of an entire continent - Africa. The agency warns that if the problems linked to joblessness and poverty are not addressed, the prospects for a more divided, unequal and turbulent world will increase. The political will to undergo necessary structural adjustments could be weakened if the social costs prove too high, heightening both the economic cost of adjustment to globalization and the risk of trade protectionism, an option which would only blight the opportunities that exist for solutions. The report acknowledges that there is no simple or painless solution to the employment problem.
National action is constrained both by internal obstacles to reform and external economic forces.
At the international level, cooperation has weakened and appears extremely difficult to restore. Global interdependence restricts governments' margin of manoeuvre on budgetary, monetary and exchange-rate policy. Just as no country or region can expect to grow in isolation from world trade and investment flows, no government can stimulate its economy or reflate on its own without risking destabilizing trade and current account difficulties in the long term. International cooperation will need to find ways out of this dilemma. Inflation in industrialized countries, the report finds, is generally under control.