Job creation must become a key component of any United Nations plan to lift people out of poverty around the world, the Vatican’s observer to the United Nations told the International Labor Conference. Speaking during a conference session on June 12, Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi said, “For countries at all levels of development, an adequate supply of jobs is the foundation of sustained and growing prosperity, inclusion and social cohesion.” He added, “We must promote the conditions for a recovery built on substantial job creation in order to establish a new social pact that puts the person and work at the center of the economy.” At the end of 2012, five years since the beginning of the global financial crisis, nearly 200 million people remained jobless. Even with a modest job growth forecast for 2013 and 2014, he said, large numbers of people will remain unemployed.

This article appears in July 1-8 2013.