UN: World Economic Growth Rate Slowing

The world is not getting any better:

The world economy has been growing more slowly after global unemployment jumped to 6.3 percent last year, the highest in a decade, the United Nations reported Wednesday.

Because it is the world's largest economy, the United States and its weakening housing market are "the major drag for this global slowdown," said the U.N. report,

It puts the expected growth of 2007 world gross product at 3.2 percent, down from an average 3.8 percent a year during the previous decade.

"We see a number of worrisome trends," said Sha Zukang, the U.N.'s undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs. "Globally, despite robust rates of economic growth, employment creation is lagging behind growth of the working-age population."

Some 195 million people were unemployed in 2006, an increase that despite continued growth in global economic output is "giving rise to the phenomenon of jobless growth," the report said.

The global labor pool comprises about two-thirds of the 4.6 billion people of working age, which the U.N. puts at 15 and older.

In the decade ending in 2006, the global unemployment rate rose to 6.3 percent, up from about 6 percent, according to the U.N.'s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Conference on Trade and Development and five regional commissions.