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During the COVID-19 pandemic, many young people around the globe have been working remotely, schools have moved to online platforms, and social distancing continues to be in effect. This means it’s essential that organizations maximize the use of social media as a platform to adapt to the crisis. Social media has been used by young people to raise awareness about coronavirus containment and suppression measures, to coordinate the logistics of relief efforts for people in isolation, and to raise funds for emergency workers.

By JAVIER SANCHEZ-REAZA There is no doubt that technology is improving our daily lives. We ask Siri to set the alarm for us, let Spotify guide us through a gym session, and rely on Waze to navigate the city. What is less obvious is how technology is also on the brink of completely reshaping our…

Authors: NAMITA DATTA APARNA KRISHNAMURTHY NAZRENE MANNIE The lack of a sufficiently skilled workforce remains a significant challenge in the labor market. Around the world, employers say that schools and universities aren’t preparing students well enough for the workforce. How can employers work with schooling and post-schooling systems to design curricula that align with labor market needs?  Employers could benefit…

Authors: APARNA KRISHNAMURTHY NIRAJ H. SHAH HANS JOEHR   Conventional wisdom tells us that young people are fleeing agriculture to seek opportunities in urban centers. While that is largely true, agriculture remains a primary source of employment for youth in many developing countries. Studies show that the absolute number of young African farmers is expected to rise…

By Hernan Winkler The short answer is: women. They are increasingly employed in jobs that are difficult to replace with new technologies, according to our new report on the Jordanian labor market. These are the non-routine jobs with better prospects as countries move up the technology ladder. They include occupations that require a lot of…

By Veronica Michel & Ian Walker   New findings show that, like their counterparts in many neighboring countries, Honduran women are sorely underrepresented in the job market. Because of this, the country’s economy is losing about 22 percent of potential per capita income – even more than the 17 percent loss for Latin America and…

Imagine this prosperous future for the Middle East and North Africa: innovation and technology permeate dynamic markets, society flourishes with the economic inclusion of youth, women and the less fortunate, and economies capitalize on the massive investments made during the past few decades.

The youth employment community needs new tools to develop new solutions. Authors: Danielle Robinson and Sunamika Singh Original post: blogs.worldbank.org/jobs Practitioners across the globe are intent on identifying effective, sustainable and scalable ways to increase youth employment based on solid evidence of what’s working—and what’s not. A 2018 stocktake conducted by the World Bank’s Jobs…

Selling rice could lift farmers out of poverty, especially if small and medium enterprises can catalyze the value chain Authors: Eric Levoy and Dotianga Konate Original post: blogs.worldbank.org/jobs When it comes to agricultural value chain development, including for staple crops like rice, big, (multi)national firms are often considered the entry point to catalyze the chain.…

Members of the S4YE Youth Advisory Group Authors: Sonia Madhvani and Timothy Clay Original post: blogs.worldbank.org/jobs Globally, unemployment is hitting young people the hardest. The ILO estimates that youth unemployment rates are 300 percent higher than unemployment rates for adults over 25 years old, and higher than unemployment among any other age group. To add…

Hundreds of workers, mostly women, sit along production lines. They are rapidly and diligently sewing clothes that will soon be packed and shipped to stores across the world.

Jobs and economic transformation are fundamental to the process of development. Quality jobs are the surest pathway out of poverty, and having the right skills is crucial to accessing them. Thus, youth skills are a key component of both the labor market prospects for young people and broader economic development. In many…

Naomi[1] lived with her family in Nairobi. In lieu of rent, she provided childcare services for her nieces and nephews. With no income, career or plan for her future, Naomi felt stuck at a young age.

Having a driver may seem like a luxury reserved for the ultra-rich in the U.S., but in Bangkok, it is an affordable necessity for aging middle-class people. My parents’ recent decision to hire a driver is a typical one for that city: My mom is 75 and my dad is 80, so it allows them to maintain independence and mobility, not to mention keep up their social lives. What’s much less common is that my mom chose a female driver, Yaa.

Creating new and better jobs is critical to ending extreme poverty and to fostering sustainable development. We know that jobs are the most direct pathway out of poverty. And the challenge is immense: 600 million new jobs will be needed over the next 15 years to keep employment rates stable. In many poor countries, too few-high productivity jobs are being created.

Read the original post here. Jobs are at the heart of development. But getting just any job isn’t enough. Women, youth and the poor are in special need of more productive jobs with better working conditions That’s where impact sourcing comes in. It’s a business model where large firms prioritize suppliers that hire and train…

Read the original post here. The Jobs Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Toolkit is a package of resources for project teams and clients to standardize the assessment of jobs outcomes in World Bank Group lending operations. By using the toolkit, project teams can collect data on jobs without running resource-intensive surveys. The toolkit contains guidance on…

Date: October 28-November 08, 2019 Location: World Bank Headquarters, Washington DC The Social Protection & Jobs Core Courses are comprised of three parallel trainings on: (1) Social Safety Nets, (2) Pensions, and (3) Jobs and Migration Policies, and will be held from October 28 – November 8, 2019, at the World Bank HQ in Washington,…

As the world of work changes, so must our approach to education and skills. Photo: Reuters Read the original post here. As the world faces the transformative economic, social and environmental challenges of Globalization 4.0, it has never been more important to invest in people. Valuing human capital not only serves to equip individuals with…

What are the pathways people follow to better jobs? Economies grow when more people find work, when they get better at what they do, and when they move from low-productivity work to better, higher-productivity jobs. Our newest report `Pathways to better jobs in IDA countries’ takes a closer look at how people benefit through jobs…

Issouf Ouattara, sales manager of the Lopé lowlands in the Hambol Region, Côte d’Ivoire, shares a laugh with Sali Soro, smallholder rice farmer (Photo by Raphaela Karlen, World Bank) The second post of this blog series illustrated the potential for poverty reduction through value chain development (VCD) in Africa. This is an approach that Côte d’Ivoire hopes…

In the first post of this blog series, we traveled to the center of Côte d’Ivoire during rice harvesting season and met two people whose livelihoods depended on the outcome: Sali Soro, a smallholder farmer and member of a regional rice cooperative, and Zié Coulibaly, director of the Katiola rice mill. Their stories illustrate the challenges faced…

A month ago, Brookings Metro published a report warning that just as the gains from economic growth were distributed unevenly over the last few decades, the losses from automation will also hurt some groups and places more than others. In the U.S., robots will take jobs from men, the young, and minorities. The losses will…

In the changing nature of work, diplomas are important, but skills are invaluable. Being a teacher in Norway may require a very different set of skills than being a teacher in Africa, even though the job title is the same. For example, while teachers in the developed world may need to have digital or foreign…

It is rice harvesting time in the Hambol Region of central Côte d’Ivoire, and Sali Soro is making sure this important day goes off without a hitch. A female member of Coop-CA Hambol, a regional rice cooperative in the Lopé lowlands, Sali managed to rent one of the few threshers available in the area. Workers…

We spoke with David Robalino, former Manager of the Jobs Group of the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice. He discusses his report “Lending for Jobs Operations” that describes a general framework to inform the design of a new generation of World Bank lending operations. These operations have explicit objectives to either create jobs, improve…

A few years ago, Gergana Ivanova became famous in my country, Bulgaria. She became the first woman to serve in the national guards’ unit and the first guardswoman to stand in front of the presidency – not only a great honor but also a dream she has had since she was in first grade. She…

Targeted household-level economic inclusion programs are on the rise: nearly 100 programs across 43 countries have reached an estimated 14 million people to date, according to the Partnership for Economic Inclusion’s (PEI) 2018 State of the Sector report. These programs provide a “big push” to help the extreme poor and other vulnerable people move into…

Social enterprises have plenty of potential to make concrete impacts on youth employment outcomes. For those not familiar with this model, social enterprises are businesses that conduct commercial, profit-generating activities but focus more on social outcomes than profits. This innovative approach in development has caught the attention of many in the youth employment space, especially…

Many people in Sub-Saharan Africa still work in agriculture; on average, over half of the labor force, and even more in poorer countries and localities. Yet the share of the labor force in agriculture is declining (as is normal in development), leading African leaders and economists to focus on job creation outside agriculture. Planning for…

Let’s face it: assessing the results of a development project can be as complex as designing and implementing it. This is particularly true for projects that aim to create more and better jobs for all population groups and often work across sectors: how do we measure the number of newly created jobs through a private…

Digital technologies affect employment through complex channels: automation, connectivity, and innovation. Labor-saving technologies coupled with reshoring may disrupt labor markets in developing countries and result in job losses. Yet, technological change drives productivity gains in both white-collar and blue-collar jobs either through ICT uptake or modern mechanical technologies. The ‘gig economy’ changes the traditional employer-employee…

Press Release | September 5, 2018 Digital jobs can bring new employment opportunities for young women in developing countries, says a new report by the Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) coalition. The report, titled Digital Jobs for Youth: Young Women in the Digital Economy, incorporates insights drawn from 19 case studies and lays out how…

There are more informal workers than formal workers across the globe, and yet there remains confusion as to what makes workers or firms informal and how to measure the extent of it. Informal work and informal economic activities imply large efficiency and welfare losses, in terms of low productivity, low earnings, sub-standard working conditions, and…

The path to inclusive growth in Mozambique lies in the generation of higher quality jobs, says a new World Bank report launched today in Maputo. According to the Mozambique Jobs Diagnostic, the existing development model, although it has achieved substantial poverty reduction since the 1990s, is limited in its capacity to support continued poverty reduction. Over…

Almost 100 economists, researchers, and policy-makers from 25 countries joined the second edition of the Jobs & Development Conference in Bogota, Colombia, on May 11th and 12th, 2018. For two days, the Conference presented the latest policy-relevant research to help address jobs challenges around the world, aiming to promote dialogue and to stimulate scientific research…

Over 50 policy-makers and practitioners attend the second Jobs and Migration Core Course. Representatives of over 25 countries are participating in the 2018 Jobs and Migration Core Course. The two-week core course is taught by recognized experts from the World Bank and other agencies, international organizations, academics, and policy makers from around the world. It…

A complex set of laws, policies, and other factors influences refugees’ right to work and access to labor markets. Host countries need to assess the economic impacts of granting refugees the right to work and identify which factors are hampering their labor market integration. Support from the international community for refugee host countries is key.

When it comes to youth employment projects, there is a lag in the spread of innovations due to the various contexts, funders, and organizations often operating independently. Youth employment projects face varying contextual realities and constraints that often result in generating innovations when adapting and customizing their monitoring and evaluation system. There is a lag…

Working parents face several challenges in accessing decent childcare. This publication, Tackling Childcare: The Business Case for Employer- Supported Childcare, was produced by the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) Gender Secretariat. It was developed under the overall guidance of Caren Grown (Senior Director, Gender, World Bank Group), Mary Porter Peschka (Director of IFC Advisory Solutions), Milagros…

The Jobs Umbrella MultidonorTrust Fund (the MDTF) is a financing instrument that supports the World Bank Group’s (WBG) jobs strategy to contribute to the twin goals of reducing poverty and ensuring inclusive growth in the world’s poorest countries. This effort is led by the Jobs Group, which provides guidance on integrated, multisector jobs strategies. The…

Addressing the employment gap in North Lebanon requires a comprehensive approach that targets both the private sector and the workers, according to a new World Bank report entitled “Jobs for North Lebanon – Value Chains, Labor Markets, Skills and Investment Climate in Tripoli and the North”. The report highlights the opportunities that exist for targeted…

The population of Lusaka, Zambia’s capital city, has grown tremendously from one million people in 2000 to an estimated 2.3 million in 2016. Much of this growth is attributed to the influx of large numbers of young people, who have fled the rural life of farming and poverty. In search of economic opportunities, Jonas Phiri,…

One of the challenges of measuring jobs is addressing impacts that go beyond direct jobs. A tool called tracer surveys is helping do this. In addition to correctly measuring the jobs directly generated from interventions and investments, development agencies also need to estimate the resulting indirect impacts and general equilibrium effects. These are hard to…

Several new tools are helping development finance institutions measure the impact of the private sector investments on jobs.

For the poor and vulnerable of the world, jobs are key to ending poverty and driving development. But not all jobs are equally transformational.

Jobs are key to ending poverty and development practitioners, policymakers, academics, and business leaders agree that measuring jobs is important. While data on the number of jobs being created is important, it only tells a small part of the story.

An ambitious plan to help create more, better and inclusive jobs through a combination of targeted projects and analytical research tools. Addressing issues as complex and diverse as helping create jobs for refugees or increasing the productivity for farmers in poor countries is challenging. But with more than 200 million people worldwide looking for jobs—most…