Unemployment is Fastest Rising Global Fear

Published: 26th March 2012

 A new survey by the BBC World Service has revealed that unemployment is one of the most talked about concerns around the globe.

The yearly poll, carried out by Globescan, asked 11,000 people in 23 countries to look at a list of issues and choose which worries they had discussed with friends or family in the past month.

Whilst corruption and poverty remained major concerns ranking highest in the results, unemployment showed a significant increase with 18% of people mentioning this as their biggest fear. It is not perhaps all that surprising that this has risen to 6 times the rate of the first survey back in 2009, considering the current economic climate and recent difficulties within the Eurozone.

The growth in concern was consistent across all 23 countries involved in the survey; however some areas demonstrated more worry than others. Spain topped the list with 54% of people saying they had discussed unemployment in the past 4 weeks – up one third on the previous year’s poll, perhaps reflecting the anxiety over recent debt issues and the high youth unemployment rate in the region. Other areas which recorded worry about job losses and unemployment were Ghana, Mexico, Nigeria and Turkey.