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…
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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…
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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…
DetailsAuthors: Andreas Eberhard-Ruiz and Kevwe Pela, Jobs Group, World Bank. In this blog, we explore whether the process of structural change differs between resource-rich and resource-poor economies, and discuss the implications of our findings for jobs strategies in resource-rich countries. The ‘Great Convergence’ of global incomes seen over the last 30 years, was triggered by…
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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…
DetailsAuthors: Dino Merotto and Elena Casanovas, Jobs Group, World Bank. In in blog #2 and blog #3 in this series we focused on the evolution of the sectoral pattern of production and jobs as countries develop. But new research suggests that changing patterns of consumption and net trade should also be taken into account when…
DetailsAuthor: Andreas Eberhard-Ruiz, Jobs Group, World Bank. Out of 48 countries whose per capita income more than doubled in real terms since 1991, 47 experienced a decline in the share of workers in the agriculture sector, and in 27 of them, this decline exceeded ten percentage points. However, the sectoral shift in employment is not…
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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…
DetailsAuthor: Andreas Eberhard-Ruiz, Jobs Group, World Bank. Between 1996 and 2003, Nigeria’s per capita GDP grew by almost 3 percent per annum and the proportion of people living under US$ 1.90 per day – the World Bank’s threshold to measure extreme poverty – fell from 64 percent to 54 percent. By contrast, poverty did not…
DetailsAuthors: Michael Weber and Jörg Langbein, Jobs Group, World Bank. Waged employment is the pathway to better jobs for most workers. Workers in waged jobs have more stable and higher earnings, better quality employment, and longer work relationships than many other types of employment (Merotto, Weber & Aterido, 2018). Yet, employment patterns vary greatly by…
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