Unemployment is tough to measure accurately. There are about 5 billion adults. The International Labour Organization states that global unemployment is 5.9%. The problem is partly that ‘job’ is a tough thing to define. Is a farmer an employee or an employer? That may be clear in industrialized societies; but a farmer forced by circumstance to farm for basic subsistence may not think they have a job but may think they are in perpetual crisis. Of the 5 billion, only about 161 million have jobs that are conventional and engaging. Those jobs are the model and the goal of many of the rest; but evidently, the conventional notion of a job is rare, and in many cases an illusion. One possibility is that we need a new definition of what people need to do to meet their needs, a sign of a system that needs to continue to shift and mature.
“Global Joblessness: The Real Number – Gallup
Pretending Not To Panic 