Jobs Umbrella Multi-Donor Trust Fund

The Jobs Umbrella Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) finances activities and pilots, designed to deliver high-impact jobs solutions across countries. These solutions can be adapted to respond to the needs of various priority groups such as youth, women, the poor, and those living in conflict- affected areas.

Context

Countries Supported
40
Grants Financed
140
Funding Raised
68
Million
Investment Leveraged
3
Billion

May, 2023

The Jobs MDTF has brought together all the WBG trust-funded activities on the jobs agenda under a single umbrella. Its high-level objectives are (a) to support WBG client countries in designing high impact jobs strategies, and (b) to advance global knowledge on effective jobs policies, especially for vulnerable groups.

Phase 1 grants were awarded on a competitive basis and were linked to specific jobs outcomes such as improving jobs policies and programs, mainstreaming the private sector in the jobs agenda, and improving stakeholder capacity, details of which can be found in the recent Jobs MDTF Annual Reports (2019 and 2020).

Under Phase 1, the MDTF supported WBG teams, other development agencies, and private sector actors to find solutions to the global jobs crisis by harnessing the potential of the private sector to create better, more inclusive jobs.

The Jobs MDTF has moved into Phase 2 (2021-2025), which will focus even more on operationalizing jobs interventions at scale, with a special attention on the medium- and long-term labor market effects of the COVID-19 crisis.

Access to the Jobs MDTF Annual Report 2021-2022 here.

MDTF Workstreams

Measuring Jobs Impacts

This workstream supports the measurement of jobs impacts by enabling consistent and evidence-based jobs measurement strategies at the project, sector, and country levels.

Across these levels, the workstream:

  • Deepens guidance on measurement for jobs-themed projects, and
  • Helps to estimate jobs created from new or additional investments and operations. It also tracks the evolution of structural change and labor markets at the economy-wide level.

The MDTF also improves the impact assessment of public and private initiatives on qualitative and quantitative dimensions of jobs including:

  • Number of jobs gained
  • The quality of jobs gained, and
  • The inclusiveness of jobs gained

By implementing these initiatives, the MDTF will provide policymakers with improved information on expected benefits of interventions.

Click here to see outputs from MDTF

Influence Through Partnerships & Innovation

The Partnerships workstream will facilitate knowledge sharing and promote innovative solutions to emerging jobs challenges. It will operate though three mechanisms:

1) Working with the private sector to develop multi-stakeholder partnerships. This will build on the experience of successful initiatives such as the Let’s Work and Solutions for Youth Employment

2) Creating a learning community that will bring together clients, donor governments and decision makers that are working on the jobs agenda, and

3) Implementing the Innovation Challenge, which supports diagnoses and solutions to jobs challenges through country-based innovation challenge competitions

Country Pilots

Country Pilots Supported by Let’s Work