Latest Resources
The Social Crisis Behind the Economic Crisis - the Millions of Young People Unemployed
Author: International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: Research
ITUC - 2012. "The financial crisis that broke out in 2008 has given rise to the worst economic crisis in 30 years and the biggest overall fall in GDP since the Second World War. [...] Young people are the hardest hit by this crisis. As highlighted in the “Global Unions’ Statement to the G20 Summit” on 3 and 4 November 2011: “The rise in unemployment since the crisis began has hit young people particularly hard, and together with rising long-term unemployment, high youth unemployment threatens to weaken long-term growth potential.” According to the figures published in the ILO report “Global Employment Trends for Youth” in 2011, youth unemployment rates have not simply seen a rise but a historical increase, going from 11.8% to 12.7% between 2008 and 2009 - the largest annual rise recorded in the last 20 years. The report adds that overall youth unemployment has overtaken adult unemployment, further confirming the fact that young people are more vulnerable to economic shocks and are the “first out” and "last in" in times of crisis."
Global Employment Trends for Youth 2012
Author: International Labour Organization (ILO)
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: Research
ILO - 2012. The study examines the continuing job crisis affecting young people in many parts of the world. It provides updated statistics on global and regional youth unemployment rates and presents ILO policy recommendations to curb the current trends.
Understanding deficits of productive employment and setting targets: a methodological guide
Author: International Labour Organization (ILO)
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: Research
ILO - 2012. "Based on the MDG target to achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people, the present guide elaborates on the concepts of productive employment and its antonym, deficits of productive employment. It provides a guide to estimating current and past deficits in productive employment and on how established targets for reducing poverty and unemployment can be used to derive targets for productive employment generation. Such targets, in their turn, may be used to inform economic and social policies as well as to assess policy coherence from the perspective of achieving productive employment for all and reduce poverty."
International Standard Classification of Occupations 2008 (ISCO-08): Structure, group definitions and correspondence tables
Author: International Labour Organization (ILO)
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: Policy
ILO 2012. This volume presents the structure and definitions of all groups in the International Standard Classification of Occupations 2008 (ISCO-08) and their correspondence with ISCO-88.
Asia‐Pacific Labour Market Update, April 2012
Author: ILO
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: Information Material
ILO - April, 2012. "This resource provides a snapshot of recent economic and labour market trends for a number of countries in the Asia-Pacific region, based on official data available as of 17 April 2012."
Joint Report - Inventory of Policy Responses to the Financial and Economic Crisis
Author: International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Bank (WB)
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: Research
ILO/WB - 2012. "The report reveals that in most of the 55 low-income and middle-income and 22 high-income countries surveyed, unlike previous crises, there was considerable government intervention to mitigate the impacts of the downturn. Not only did a majority of effected countries use expansionary fiscal and monetary policies to stimulate the economy, they also directly intervened to protect or create employment, preserve skills and facilitate the matching between job-seekers and employers, and protect the incomes of the unemployed and vulnerable groups. In many cases, social dialogue helped guide the policy response. This was critical, for instance, when implementing work-sharing arrangements."
The ILO/World Bank Inventory of policy responses to the global financial and economic crisis of 2008
Author: International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Bank (WB)
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: Information Material
ILO, WB - 2012. "The International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Bank (WB) have produced this comprehensive new database that examines for the first time the policy responses taken by 77 countries since the start of the financial and economic crisis. The information contained in the database was collected over a two-year period (mid-2008 to end-2010) and comprises 55 low-income and middle-income countries and 22 high-income countries. It is organized around seven categories: macroeconomic policies; measures to increase labour demand; active labour market policies; unemployment benefits; social protection measures; social dialogue and labour standards. The web-based policy inventory has been built as a user-focused platform to facilitate interaction between interested stakeholders, including ministries, social partners, the private sector, implementing agencies, private corporate partnerships, individuals, and NGOs. The genesis of the database was the G20 summit in London in April 2009, in which the ILO was asked to “work with other relevant organizations, to assess the actions taken and those required for the future”. Earlier that year the ILO adopted a “Global Jobs Pact” including a portfolio of suggested policies aimed at reducing the lag time between economic and employment recovery. In early 2010, the ILO and the World Bank decided to conduct a joint survey of policy responses to the crisis, based on the structure of the Global Jobs Pact. This database is the result of that collaboration. Using this database, the ILO and the World Bank have issued a "Joint synthesis report" which offers early policy insights, to indentify effective approaches to maintain and promote employment during times of crisis. This database and report were enabled by financial support provided by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), for the ILO, and by the Multi-donor Trust Fund on “Labour Markets, Job Creation, and Economic Growth” with funding from Austria,Germany, Korea, Norway, and Switzerland for the World Bank."
Employment Diagnostic Analysis: a methodological guide
Author: International Labour Organization (ILO)
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: Training Material
ILO - 2012. The purpose of the present guide is to provide a tool for context-specific analysis of the dynamics and characteristics of employment and to identify and understand the causes behind the main constraints and challenges, as well as opportunities for increasing productive employment in an inclusive and sustainable manner.
Gendered Impacts of Globalization: Employment and Social Protection
Author: Camila Arza, Elissa Braunstein, Kristine Goulding, Sarah Cook, Shahra Razavi
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: Research
UN - 2012. "The last three decades have seen remarkable changes in economic structures and policies both within and across countries, loosely captured by the term globalization. This paper reviews evidence on how key aspects of globalization processes have impacted the real economy, in terms of employment and social conditions of work for women and men across a wide range of countries. Globalization has coincided with a global increase in female labour force participation rates which has narrowed the gender gap from 32 to 26 percentage points. A number of factors associated with globalization processes have contributed to this increase, including the growth of production for export in the developing world. With labour costs such a crucial part of international competitiveness, labour-intensive exporters have shown a preference for women workers because their wages are typically lower than men’s and because women are perceived as more productive in these types of jobs. The narrowing of the gender gap in economic participation rates has not produced commensurate gender equality in pay and status. In fact, increasing female labour force participation has coincided with an increase in informal and unprotected forms of work. Jobs in export-oriented manufacturing firms and capitalist farms producing horticultural export crops have benefited some women, giving them their first discretionary income or a greater say in the allocation of household resources. However, even in the countries where production for export has created new forms of employment, occupational segregation has been maintained: the wages and conditions of work remain far from satisfactory for women who continue to be concentrated in temporary and seasonal jobs, while the few permanent jobs that are created are reserved for men. The orthodox policy approach of tight monetary and fiscal policies, and free trade and capital flows, has not proved to be conducive for either widespread development or extensive improvements in well-being and gender equality. There is growing support for alternative macroeconomic policies that, while aiming for macroeconomic stability, take more heed of development and social goals. This would have to include monetary and fiscal policies that are more expansionary, taxation policies that provide governments with adequate revenues to fund social expenditures. If economic growth is to be broadly shared, it is necessary to introduce a set of labour market policies and related interventions that can affect working conditions in diverse employment situations. These should not only enhance the capabilities of workers to capture some of the productivity gains that are now siphoned off into profits, but also rectify gender imbalances and discriminatory practices. Second, if gender inequalities in labour markets are to be rectified, society as a whole has to seek specific means of both progressing toward a better balance between the provision of unpaid reproductive work and paid labour, and facilitating greater gender equality in both domains. For many developing countries, attaining gender equality requires strengthening publicly accountable systems of mutual assurance against entitlement failure. This means investing in well-functioning and accessible public health, education and care services that can also become a source of decent employment; broad-based and redistributive social insurance programmes; and public provision of a range of complementary goods and services such as clean water, subsidized food items, sanitation, electricity, transport and housing."
Skills and Employability Network Updates #6
Author: ILO Skills and Employability Team
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: CoP Product
ILO - March 2012. This is the sixth (March) edition of the Skills and Employability Updates, a bi-monthly newsletter created by the Skills and Employability Team. We welcome comments and contributions from our members, so if you have something to share - an event, a publication, news - please let us know and we will include it in the next edition of the Updates.
Skills for Green Jobs - Consolidated Response
Author: Skills and Employability Network
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: CoP Product
ILO - 2012. This is the Consolidated Report from the Skills and Employability online discussion on Skills for Green Jobs that were held on November 2011 on the Skills and Employability portal.
Trade and employment: Review of recent studies
ILO - 2012. This paper presents findings from two recent high profile volumes edited and published by the ILO. It describes how evidence from these publications has been channelled into the policy debate at international and national level. The paper invites the Working Party to review the findings of the publications and the policy directions they suggest.
Addressing the employment challenge: India's MGNREGA
ILO - 2012. Employment Working Paper No. 105. In September 2005, India’s parliament enacted a remarkable piece of legislation – the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), later renamed Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The Act recognizes employment as an entitlement and defines an obligation for the government – the obligation to provide, in each year, 100 days of wage employment at a stipulated minimum wage to all rural households whose members are seeking or willing to do unskilled manual work. Employment scheme under MGNREGA – we shall henceforth refer to it as MGNREGS – was launched in 200 poorest districts during 2006-07 and extended to another 130 districts during 2007-08. Since 2008-09, MGNREGS has been implemented in all the 600-odd non-urban districts in the country.
Monetary policy and employment in developing Asia
ILO - 2012. Working Paper. Despite the high prevalence of vulnerable employment and working poverty in developing Asia, full employment is not a legislated objective of any central bank in the region. As this paper shows, however, many central banks are actively using monetary policy to promote productive employment, and they do appear concerned with labour market outcomes. By working closely with governments, central banks in developing Asia help to promote macroeconomic stability and strive for the goal of full employment. But given the gaps in employment data and the structural roots of vulnerable employment and poverty, tasking central banks in developing Asia with an employment objective, as has been done in Australia and the United States, appears inappropriate.
The relationship between elderly employment and youth employment: evidence from China
Author: Chuanchuan Zhang
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: Research
Zhang, Chuanchuan, China Center for Economic Research, Peking University, Department of Economics, Harvard University - March 2012. "Using micro data from China’s 1990 and 2000 census and the 2005 1% population sample survey, we provide the first piece of evidence on the relationship between elderly employment and youth employment in China. Our OLS estimation results suggest that employment rates of younger persons are positively rather than negatively associated with employment rate of older persons. We further tried to identify a causal relationship by using two-way fixed effects and TSLS estimation strategies and found results consistent with our OLS estimation. Finally, we examine whether employment of older persons hurts the youth at the intensive margin by estimating the impact of elderly employment on younger workers’ monthly wage and still found a positive rather than negative effect. In short, the claim that postponing the retirement age will hurt the youth cannot be supported by empirical evidence."
ILO Fact sheet: Youth Employment in Asia-Pacific
Author: International Labour Organization (ILO)
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: Information Material
ILO - March 2012. Fact sheet on youth employment and youth employment related programmes and projects in Asia-Pacific.
Employment Dimension of Trade Liberalization with China: Analysis of the case of Indonesia With Dynamic Social Accounting Matrix
ILO - 2012. The ASEAN – China FTA raises a lot of concerns regarding its employment impact in Indonesia. The loss of millions of jobs has been predicted as a consequence of the final liberalization round, though few studies on ACFTA consider employment explicitly. This paper has two objectives. First, the employment effects of ACFTA in Indonesia on different groups of the labour market such as rural and youth employment are assessed.
Global Employment Trends 2012: Preventing a deeper jobs crisis
ILO, January 2012 - The annual Global Employment Trends report offers the latest global and regional information and projections on several indicators of the labour market, including unemployment, youth employment and working poverty.
National Consultation Workshop on Promoting Gender Equality in TVET in Bangladesh
Author: ILO
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: Project and Programme
ILO - January 2012. "The workshop was one of the first initiatives of the newly-formed NSDC Secretariat and the CEO; Mr Jiban Kumar Chowdhury took an active role in leading the proceedings and promoting the role of the Secretariat among key TVET stakeholders in Bangladesh."
Greening of the building sector is held back by skill shortages. Skills-led strategies can drive green building forward
Author: ILO EU
Publishing Date:
2012
Category: Research
ILO - 2012. This research brief is a digest of the study Skills and Occupational Needs in Green Building (ILO, 2011), which resulted from a joint EC-ILO project on Knowledge sharing in early identification of skill needs. The project covered over 30 countries worldwide – both developed and developing. It was supported by the EU Programme for Employment and Social Solidarity – PROGRESS (2007-2013) and implemented in the framework of the Green Jobs Initiative – a partnership between the ILO, UNEP, IOE and ITUC. The study draws on a number of country case studies and a survey of ILO constituents including governments, employers’ and workers’ organisations. The findings were validated through a focus group discussion and an experts workshop.