The effects of unemployment

Throughout much of the world, unemployment will keep rising way beyond the formal end of the recession.

According to the UN's International Labour Organisation, there are upwards of 230 million unemployed people on this planet, around seven per cent of the workforce.

In some places it's worse. In the US, for example, unemployment has just risen to 9.9 per cent, so the recession has eliminated just over seven million American jobs.

Changing behaviour

Which all puts pressure on those in work. It's cold out there, so behaviour changes.

To find out more, Steve Evans spoke to Jenny Chatman of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. She has also advised a string of organisations from Coca-Cola to Microsoft to the US Postal Service and the US Treasury but her studies go across the whole economy.

There is much sympathy to go round here, of course.

The pain of unemployment obviously can be devastating, but spare a thought, too, for managers still in companies that are struggling through tough times.

Research indicates that managers get squeezed between the board above and the workers below.

This has emerged from research across twenty-one countries, involving 12,000 teams of managers and 2,500 boards of directors. It was led by Professor Andrew Kakabadse of the Cranfield School of Management near London.

What emerged was division and in-fighting with managers often afraid to tell truth to power.

First broadcast on Business Daily 9 October 2009