E ARLIER this year, the International Labor Offi ce

announced that global unemployment last year reached the highest level on record. More than 200 million people, 7 percent of the global workforce, were looking for jobs in 2009. It is not a coincidence that the global economy is expe-riencing the most severe case of unemployment dur-ing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Unemployment is highly dependent on economic activity; in fact, growth and unemployment can be thought of as two sides of the same coin: when economic activity is high, more production happens overall, and more people are needed to produce the higher amount of goods and services. And when economic activity is low, firms cut jobs and unemployment rises. In that sense, unemployment is countercyclical, mean-ing that it rises when economic growth is low and vice versa