| Resumen: |
The last time the World Bank took a view on labor markets was 16 years ago, with the 1995 World Development Report (WDR) on Workers in an Integrating World. Back then, the issue was globalization and whether international trade and capital inflows would hurt employment. By now we are in an inexorably integrated world and the questions have evolved. What happens to jobs in one part of the world has implications for others. East Asia’s moving up the value-added ladder and shedding jobs in light manufacturing opens up opportunities for countries in poorer regions to fill that slot; it also challenges countries in more advanced regions. Technological innovations may now result in a global migration of jobs in services. As employment opportunities are created in developing countries, global demand expands and employment prospects improve in the industrial world. Gaps between labor market conditions in different parts of the world open new avenues for international migration.
The challenge is to articulate a framework that cuts across sectors, considers the dynamic links between development strategies and jobs, and provides analytical tools to consider policies and programs from a jobs perspective. This is not to say that the jobs lens should replace the focus on overcoming poverty and raising living standards but jobs clearly are an important intermediate outcome.
This outline presents the structure and approach of the 2013 WDR. The Report aims to improve our understanding of the connection between jobs and important dimensions of economic and social development. It also intends to provide analytical tools to identify the obstacles to sustained job creation. In so doing, the Report will also emphasize differences in the nature of jobs which can affect their potential to raise living standards, increase aggregate productivity, or enhance social cohesion.
Although the Report will discuss policies to address immediate job shortfalls from short-term crises and downturns, it will emphasize the fundamentals of job creation in a longer timeframe. It will deal with job losses because short-term fluctuations and structural transformation are integral parts of the development process. In particular, the Report will explore how that the initial conditions and the existing institutional arrangements, as well as labor market functioning and policies, impact on jobs responses to major shocks and downturns.
The Report will generate new data on employment, earnings and labor market policies and institutions around the world. It will also discuss global labor trends and summarize and interpret the evidence on the effectiveness of specific jobs-related programs and interventions, highlighting the most promising examples. But its main contribution will be to provide a framework to address the most difficult jobs-related questions facing policy makers in developing countries. The Report will present evidence, including that supporting counter-intuitive answers to those questions, leading to a reasoned discussion of when conventional wisdom may hold, and when it may not. |
