Photo credit: Dana Smillie / World Bank Authors: Margo Hoftijzer, Victoria Levin, and Michael Weber This blog is also available in French and Spanish. In our May 2020 blog, we predicted that TVET would particularly suffer from school closures as imparting and assessing practical skills is so central for TVET and so hard to do remotely.…
Photo credit: Rob Beechey / World Bank Authors: Xinshen Diaoa, Mia Ellisb, Margaret McMillanc, and Dani Rodrikd Some economists have called into question the primacy of manufacturing. For example, Gollin (2018) questions whether there is anything special about manufacturing and asks whether economists’ emphasis on manufacturing as a path to development reflects our lack…
Urbanization, Agriculture, Structural Change
Photo credit: Paul Salazar / World Bank Authors: Michael Weber and David Newhouse Unlike the global financial crisis, both voluntary and mandated restrictions on mobility have directly affected labor markets. The scale of labor market disruption in developing countries has been massive. In its latest update, the ILO estimated a loss of 255 million…
Photo: Li Wenyong / World Bank Authors: Jana Kuhnt and Kirsten Schuettler Displaced people face many challenges when integrating into the labor market in their host communities. They are also more likely than the host population to be employed in sectors that are highly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as manufacturing, accommodation, and food services. And …
Photo credit: Scott Wallace / World Bank Authors: Kevin Donovan, Will Jianyu Lu, and Todd Schoellman Economic development requires the reallocation of workers to more productive occupations, sectors, and regions. As such, evidence on labor market dynamics is critical for understanding whether labor markets are enabling the necessary movements of workers. In our recent…
Photo credit: World Bank / Ousmane Traore Authors: Girum Abebe and Christina Wieser To understand how the COVID-19 pandemic affects businesses in Ethiopia, the World Bank, in collaboration with the Job Creation Commission (JCC), has implemented a high-frequency phone survey of firms in the capital city of Addis Ababa. Using results from the phone…
Authors: Girum Abebe and Christina Wieser Beyond public health concerns and chilling epidemiological outcomes, the economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been unprecedented. According to the World Bank, for example, Africa will likely face recession for the first time in 25 years and the ILO estimates that . A sharp drop in…
Photo credit: Victor Idrogo / World Bank Authors: David Newhouse and Michael Weber The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought havoc on economies and workers worldwide — but the impacts are difficult to quantify, because the pandemic has made traditional face-to-face data collection impossible in most places. The World Bank projects that These projections, however, are…