A survey conducted by the BBC World Service covering 11,000 people in 23 countries found unemployment was the world’s fastest-rising worry. People were given a list of concerns and asked which of the issues they had discussed with family or friends in the past month.
At the top of the list came corruption and poverty which ranked the highest and unemployment taking the 3rd place was mentioned by 18% which is six times the number of people mentioning the issue in the first survey in 2009. Inflation, such as higher food and energy prices, were on par with unemployment. These results would suggest people are being more careful with their expenses, cutting back on social activities but also electricity bills and internet usage including online casino gaming. The growth in concern for unemployment was found across all participating countries, although corruption emerged as the most talked about global concern.
But the latest results show that issues people find important vary considerably from one country to another. For example, in wealthy developed nations like the US, France and Japan, the state of the world economy emerged as the main talking point. While, in developing nations such as Nigeria, India, Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria and Peru, corruption was the most frequently discussed issue. In another group of developing countries, including China, Russia, Kenya and the Philippines, rising prices for food and energy were the main topic.