Group items tagged

"The World Development Report 2013: Jobs stresses the role of strong private sector led growth in creating jobs and outlines how jobs that do the most for development can spur a virtuous cycle. The report finds that poverty falls as people work their way out of hardship and as jobs empower women to invest more in their children. Efficiency increases as workers get better at what they do, as more productive jobs appear, and as less productive ones disappear. Societies flourish as jobs foster diversity and provide alternatives to conflict."

The study focuses on practical lessons, and seeks to find out what types of activities are most likely to have the greatest impact on job creation, and how these activities affect different societal groups. It complements the World Bank's recent World Development Report on Jobs by offering practical lessons and recommendations to help the private sector create more high-quality jobs.

Despite growth estimates going down for China (now at 7.4% in Q3/2012), the labour market is still tight and wages are still rising. Growth figures below 8% were previously considered cause for concern, but this article suggests that demographic trends (i.e. impact of the one child policy) are lessening the pressure on the government for job creation. There simply are not as many workers joining the workforce.While the latest slowdown has led to some temporary job cuts, these have not been near the figures reached in 2008-9. All of these factors suggest that further large-scale stimulus measures in China are unlikely.

"The ILO's flagship report on the world of work shows, for the first time, that quality jobs can drive sustained growth in emerging and developing countries."

Kirsten Newitt surveys the scope and impact of private sector labour standards initiatives, in a background paper commissioned by the World Bank for its 2012 World Development Report on Jobs

To eradicate poverty, the international community should pursue a wider and more far-reaching approach to development than was captured in the MDGs, European thinktanks say in the 2013 ERD. Although poverty should remain a core focus of the new agenda, the objective should be to tackle its causes by adopting a more inclusive and sustainable development model that emphasises jobs and addresses inequality, according to ODI, the European Council for Development Policy Management and the German Development Institute.

"Women face higher unemployment rates than men globally, with no improvements likely in the coming years, according to an ILO report. The ILO's Global Employment Trends for Women 2012 looks at the gender gap in unemployment, employment, labour force participation, vulnerability, and segregation in jobs and economic sectors. Globally, the gap in unemployment and employment-to-population ratios was moving towards convergence before the crisis. The crisis reversed this trend in the hardest-hit regions. In the advanced countries, the crisis seems to have affected men in trade- dependent sectors more than women in health and education. In developing countries, women were strongly hit in trade-related sectors."

Employment and social protection are both foregrounded in the opening paragraphs. Announcement of new Employment Taskforce, to be convened under the Mexican presidency, with an initial focus on youth unemployment. Several international organisations, including ILO, IMF, World Bank, to report to the G20 Finance ministers on best approaches to growth and job creation.

World Bank note (May 2012) on wage and poverty alleviation trends linked to the garment sector. "A radical shift in apparel production between countries over the last few years has had mixed results in wages and poverty reduction across the developing world. This is particularly true since the end of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) and the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) in 2005, which abolished export and import quotas. While most people predicted that China would gain, because of low wages, and all others would lose, many other Asian apparel exporters in fact benefited, such as Bangladesh, India, Vietnam and Pakistan. And not just because of low wages -salaries tended to increase in most exporting countries-but because of domestic policies supporting the textile industry. On the other hand, countries like Honduras, Mexico, Morocco and Sri Lanka experienced falling apparel employment, something that would appear to be bad news as jobs for women and workers most likely to be closest to poverty, were lost. But Mexico's experience suggests that shifting out of apparel may not be necessarily negative news when the country is moving up the value chain into more advanced manufacturing. In fact, this would be a sign of economic development as long as the shift into higher-value goods and services is possible. What matters is for countries to have policies that focus on improving competitiveness in the long-run, but also workforce programs to help workers make the transition. Increasing apparel exports is a good thing for poverty reduction in developing countries but moving up the ladder is an inevitable step in the quest for prosperity. Let's allow the textile industry to keep moving across borders and to help countries lift themselves out of poverty."

DFID's new private sector policy paper "Our new approach to working with the private sector is about us doing more with and for private enterprise, extending this work in new areas, and doing it better. We want private sector thinking to become as much part of DFID's DNA as our work with charities and governments. The new approach will deliver results for poor people: better job opportunities and incomes; more readily available and affordable finance for households and small businesses; and more accessible, better quality healthcare, schooling and basic services."

Improvement in labor market conditions has been the main explanation behind many of the poverty success stories observed in the last decade-that is the primary conclusion of an analysis of changes in poverty by income source. Changes in labor earnings were the largest contributor to poverty reduction for a sample of 16 countries where poverty increased substantially. In 10 of these countries, labor income explained more than half of the change in poverty, and in another 4 countries, it accounted for more than 40 percent of the reduction in poverty. A declining dependency rate accounts for over a fifth of the reduction in poverty in 10 out of 16 countries, while transfers and other nonearned incomes account for more than a quarter of the reduction in poverty in 9 of these countries. A further decomposition of the contribution of labor income to poverty reduction in Bangladesh, Peru, and Thailand found that changes in individual characteristics (education, work experience, and region of residence) were important, but that overall, increases in real earnings among the poor matter the most.

ILO's concept note on post-MDG priorities

New report published by the Africa Progress Panel