A rapid decrease in unemployment is a short-term priority to limit social problems and reduce the risk of rising structural unemployment. To this end, strengthening labour market policies to sustain labour demand is key. The public works programme should remain temporary and become more focused...

Poor labour-market outcomes remain one of Poland’s major structural weaknesses, impeding firms’ competitiveness and the nation’s potential output. Boosting employment prospects is also critical, as the country will soon be ageing at a fast pace. Despite long working hours, labour...

This study analyzes labor market performance in the Philippines from the perspective of workers' welfare. It argues that pervasive in-work poverty is the main challenge facing labor policy. Poverty is primarily due to low earning capacity of the poor and to their limited access to regular and...

This is a semi-annual report series on recent economic developments and economic policies in the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia). The report looks at the economic performance and outlook for the Western Balkans region and specific...

This report stems from the work initiated in the Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) forUzbekistan in May 2016, which identified the quality of job creation as a central, cross-cuttingtheme. The SCD emphasized that "over the medium term, creating high-productivity, high-paying jobs for...

The Nicaragua Jobs Diagnostic applies the Bank's standard Jobs Diagnostics tool to explore trends and macro drivers of economic and jobs transformation, labor market outcomes from the supply side, and sources of job creation from the perspective of the demand or private sector sides. The report...

Population ageing will lead to a smaller and older workforce. Looking forward, this means that growth will increasingly depend on ensuring the best use of Slovenian workers. This implies keeping older and experience workers longer in employment and better support difficult-to-employ low-skilled...

Paraguay in the last decade and a half not only experienced robust economic growth and improved labor outcomes across sectors, it also saw marked improvements in job quality and the creation of many new jobs that are good for development. Good jobs for development, the focus of this analysis,...

Indonesia has enjoyed a demographic dividend over the last forty years. The working population has been growing faster than the population of non-working dependents. This presents a major opportunity for economic growth and poverty reduction, provided that more jobs and better jobs are created...

Using data from a national survey of Chinese manufacturing firms conducted in 2009, the authors analyze the impact of implementation of China's 2008 labor contract law on the employment of production workers. The authors found that cities with lax prior enforcement of labor regulations...