More than 50 million jobs could be lost worldwide by the end of this year as a result of the global economic meltdown, the United Nations warned as world leaders gathered at Davos today.

The stunning estimate by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) came only hours after the opening of the World Economic Forum amid a deepening sense of gloom and helplessness among the global business elite.

The UN agency said that its worst-case scenario would see global employment soar from 6 per cent to 7.1 per cent, resulting in a loss of 51 million jobs across the globe since the crisis began in 2007.

The most optimistic forecast is for 18 million jobs to be lost, with the most realistic prediction somewhere in between at about 30 million.

Wherever the axe falls, however, the figures represented no less than a “global jobs crisis,” according to Juan Somavía, the director-general of the ILO.

"If the recession deepens in 2009, as many forecasters expect, the global jobs crisis will worsen sharply," Mr Somavía warned as he presented the agency’s annual report.

Even those who remain employed will not necessarily escape the effects of the recession, he said.

“We can expect that for many of those who manage to keep a job, earnings and other conditions of employment will deteriorate,” he said.

The crisis could also push another 200 million workers into extreme poverty as they eke out a living in informal, underpaid and unstable work, especially in Africa and South Asia, the ILO predicted.

That would swell the ranks of the “working poor” to 1.4 billion, just under half of the entire working population of the world.

News of a global jobs crisis will come as little surprise to the thousands who have lost their jobs in the days of economic carnage leading up to the conference.

On Friday, 30,000 Americans lost their jobs in big staff cuts by Caterpillar and Sprint Nextel, and ING, the Dutch bank, and Philips, the big electronics company, eliminated a total of 13,000 from their workforces.

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