ECONOMICS : Unemployment Ravages Nations on Global Scale : U.N. report shows jobless rates at their highest in decades. But Asian economies defy the bleak assessment.

Whether rich or poor, almost every government on Earth reigns over an economy that fails at supplying enough jobs to reduce the dispiriting and growing numbers of men and women without work. The only exceptions are the newly flush lands of Asia.

“More people are out of work than ever before,” reports the International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency, “and there is widespread anxiety that these numbers will grow.”

ILO, surveying the world, reported recently that the industrialized countries--Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan--have unemployment rates “at their highest levels since the Great Depression” of the 1930s.

At the end of 1994, the agency predicted, 35 million people will be out of work in these industrialized countries, an unemployment rate of 8.6%. To make matters worse, an increasing number of the unemployed are finding no work for more than a year.

In Italy, Belgium and Ireland, more than 60% of the unemployed are such long-termers.

“When people are out of work for more than a year,” the ILO report says, “they lose skills and work habits and cease to be attractive to employers.”

Russia and Eastern Europe, transforming themselves from communism to capitalism, are suffering massive job losses, the report said. ILO, in fact, says it does not believe official figures that show the unemployment rate in Russia at less than 1%. The countries of the former Soviet Union probably have an unemployment rate of more than 10%, it asserts.

“The worst aspect of the economic restructuring is the appalling growth in the number of people living in poverty,” ILO says, estimating the number of poor in the former Soviet Union at 100 million at the end of 1991.

Latin America, while improving, still has unemployment rates worse than in the 1970s.

ILO says there has been a disturbing increase in the number of what it called “precarious” workers--part-time, poorly paid laborers--in picking and processing coffee, sugar cane, cotton, fruit and vegetables for export.

Africa is in a woeful state: The number of those without work is ballooning and the wages of those with work plummeting. During the 1980s, wages dropped by 70% in Tanzania and 40% in Kenya.

Unprotected by government safety nets, millions of urban Africans survive by living off relatives in the bush or working in what academics call “the informal economy”--selling matches, chewing gum and other petty goods on street corners, guarding cars for tips and begging.

ILO suggested three causes for the worldwide malaise:

* The decline in economic growth rates since the first “oil shock” of 1973, especially among the industrialized countries, which account for 75% of the world’s gross domestic product.

* “A veritable technological revolution” in such fields as microelectronics, computer science, telecommunications and transportation. ILO said this revolution makes it easy for companies to operate swiftly in any part of the world, thus intensifying worldwide economic competition. To meet this competition, large corporations are slimming down, eliminating well-paying jobs.

* Failure of government policies: overprotection of the economies in the 1970s, a swing too far in the opposite direction toward a liberal free market in the 1980s and the imposition of tight money policies on debtor Third World countries that proved of little benefit.

The striking exceptions to this barren landscape are Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand.

ILO, though not wildly optimistic, believes that their success may point a way out for the others.

Most important of what ILO calls “pointers to possible solutions” is that these countries welcomed foreign investment and foreign know-how to a free market at a time when most other developing countries were trying to protect non-competitive domestic industries with a tariff wall.

“The basic strategy followed by the East and Southeast Asian economies,” the report says, “was the antithesis of the protectionist and interventionist policies followed by many developing countries in the 1970s.”

To make their economies more competitive, the Asian governments invested heavily in infrastructure and education. “No less important were policies to reduce poverty, since the poor have never been an asset in international competition,” ILO says.

A World of Job Woes

“More people are out of work than ever before,” reports the International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency. Among its findings:

Latin America, while improving, still has unemployment rates worse than in the 1970s.

In Ireland and Italy, 60% of jobless are long-termers.

The number of those without work in Africa is ballooning and the wages of those with work plummeting.

Countries of the former Soviet Union probably have an unemployment rate of more than 10%.

South Korea and Singapore are among nations where outlook is improving.

Source: International Labor Organization