World leaders attending the London Summit on 2 April must deliver 'real help' to tackle unemployment by helping get people into work, provide support for the most vulnerable and prioritise skills needed for the future.

The London Jobs Conference on 24 March gathered experts from the across the G20 countries along with labour market experts from global organisations such as the International Labour Organisation and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The Chair's Report proposed three priorities for the leaders who are gathering in London on 1 April for the Summit on 2 April:

• Helping people back into work to avoid the scars of long-term unemployment [via] active labour market policies and policies to maintain or increase labour demand;
• Supporting the disadvantaged and vulnerable groups through social protection policies, linked to employment measures…and development assistance; and
• Developing effective and targeted education and skills policies to support employability both for existing labour market conditions as well as jobs for the future, including green jobs and new technology services.
  

The report concluded: 'Representatives of the G20 countries agreed it was vital that the London Summit sent a strong message to the people of our countries that all our actions – fiscal, monetary and financial – are directed at the ultimate goals of stability, growth and jobs.

'Within the G20 process and through the responsible international organisations we should continue to monitor labour market policy responses and their impact, so that countries can share best practice. Only by working together will we mitigate the impacts of this downturn and ensure sustainable recovery.'

Speaking to this website on the fringes of the summit, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, Executive Director of the Employment Sector at the International Labour Organisation, said workers in both developed and developing countries would be hit hard this year.

He said the jobless toll could reach 40 million in industrialised countries and as much as 200 million in poorer countries over the two years to 2010.

'In the case of developing countries there are as lot of ways in which they are being affected,' he said, citing falls in exports, remittance flows, foreign direct investment, and commodity prices.

'So all the engines of growth for developing countries are gone now and that is starting to impact on labour markets and unemployment among the working poor,' he said.

'We estimate there could be an increase in 2008 and 2009 of between 150 or even 200 million more people that backslide into extreme poverty.'

He said that this 'very serious impact' required a three-pillar response from world leaders at the London Summit on 2 April: the financial pillar to restore credit; the fiscal stimulus pillar; but also a labour market pillar 'to cushion the impacts and mitigate the effects to lay the foundations for more employment and growth in the future'.

Scott Matheson of Australia, Assistant Secretary at Australia’s Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business, said that after a benign period the unemployment rate was likely to rise from 4% to '7 per cent or so' by sopring next year.

'We need to see coordinated action really,' he told this website. 'All countries are introducing economic stabilisation and stimulus packages. But I think it's that international, multilateral coordination that we really need to see coming out of the London Summit.'

Harcharan Singh, an official at India’s Department of Labour and Employment, said that while economic slump had hit India's export and construction sectors most others had been immune. Asked what he wanted world leaders to deliver on 2 April, he said: 'At the London Summit we would prefer to stress that workers should get employment in the formal sector not in the informal sector on temporary basis and contract basis.'