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This paper examines whether export participation matters for job training. The paper draws on longitudinal worker-firm data for Brazilian manufacturing, linked with detailed records on training activity from the main provider. The analysis uses industry-specific exchange rate movements to generate exogenous variation in export status at the firm-level. The findings indicate that export participation tends to increase the share of workers who receive technical upgrading. The results also reveal that technical upgrading has positive returns to trainees within exporting firms. These findings support the hypothesis that exporting requires skill upgrading, and suggest that this is partially achieved by training firms' existing workforce.

Facing the prospects of rapid aging and shrinking population over the coming decades, Slovakia needs a highly skilled workforce to help generate the productivity growth that it needs to fuel its continued convergence of living standards with its West European neighbors. Skilling up the workforce starts with equipping youth with the right cognitive and socio-emotional foundation skills. International research has identified three dimensions of skills that matter for good employment outcomes and economic growth: cognitive skills, such as literacy, numeracy, creative and critical thinking or problem-solving; socio-emotional skills and behavioral traits, such as conscientiousness, grit or openness to experience; and job- or occupation-specific technical skills, such as the ability to work as an engineer. This report focuses on cognitive skills and examines results for Slovakia from the program for international student assessment (PISA), which assesses the mathematics, reading, and science competencies of 15-year-olds. Its findings suggest that Slovakia can do significantly better in helping students develop cognitive foundation skills. This note proposes several policy recommendations, based on an analysis of Slovakia’s PISA data as well as international evidence, to make Slovakia’s education system both stronger and more inclusive.

Facing the prospects of rapid demographic aging and decline over the coming decades, Poland needs a highly skilled workforce to help generate the productivity growth that it needs to fuel continued convergence of its living standards with those of its West European neighbors. Skilling up the workforce starts with equipping youth with the right cognitive and socio-emotional foundation skills. International research has identified three dimensions of skills that matter for good employment outcomes and economic growth: cognitive skills, such as literacy, numeracy, and creative and critical thinking or problem solving; socio-emotional skills and behavioral traits, such as conscientiousness, grit, and openness to experience; and job- or occupation-specific technical skills, such as the ability to work as an engineer. This report focuses on cognitive skills. It examines results for Poland from the program for international student assessment (PISA), which assesses the mathematics, reading, and science competencies of 15-year-olds. The overall effects of reform on Poland’s PISA scores have been positive, although isolating the precise impact of each reform element is difficult. There is evidence from PISA assessments replicated for older students in upper-secondary education in 2006, 2009 and 2012 that performance gaps previously found between vocational and general schools for 15-year-olds prior to the 1999 reform persist today in upper secondary education, where the performance of students in vocational upper-secondary schools trails that of their peers in general education.

Growth moderated throughout 2015, affected by a slowdown in private consumption and weak export growth. The authorities have generally managed the downturn in commodity prices and the financial market volatility with a reasonable mix of macro policies. Heightened external volatility calls for prudent macro policies and acceleration of structural reforms. The eleventh Malaysia plan stresses the importance of effective migration management to achieve high-income country status by 2020. Immigration continues to play a crucial role in Malaysia’s development. While job growth has recently been concentrated in high-skilled occupations, three quarters of all jobs in Malaysia are still low- and mid-skilled. Econometric modelling suggests that immigrant workers can raise gross domestic product (GDP) and create employment for Malaysians. The current process for sourcing immigrant workers is complex and costly for the migrant. The immigration system can better meet the country’s development objectives if it is aligned with Malaysia’s human resource development strategy. Global experience shows that successful immigration systems recognize the long-term role of immigrant workers in the hosting country’s economic and social objectives if they are: (a) market-driven, with immigration flows aligned with labor market demands; (b) comprehensive, acknowledging the need for immigrants of all types; and (c) balanced, minimizing the negative impacts on Malaysian workers, and protecting immigrant workers from abuse.

Economic activity continued to firm up in 2015, driven by domestic demand. After coming in at 6 percent in 2014, GDP growth accelerated to 6.28 percent during the first half of 2015, the fastest first-half-of-the-year growth rate in the past five years. The recovery was driven by strong activity in manufacturing and construction, which together contributed nearly half of overall GDP growth. Retail sales also performed strongly, posting 8.3 percent (in real terms) in the first six months of 2015, up from 6.3 percent in 2014. However, despite the pickup in retail activity, overall services (which account for nearly 40 percent of GDP) rose modestly at 5.9 percent in the first half of 2015. In part, this reflected a struggling tourism sector, with tourist visits in the first six months down by 11 percent year-on-year. On the demand side, stronger growth was driven by investment (spurred by strong FDI inflows) and stronger private consumption boosted by low inflation. The contribution of net exports turned negative as sluggish external demand weighed on export growth while strengthened domestic activity continued to fuel import growth.

This note presents an overview of the Albanian labor market, and initial insights into the challenges for inclusive and better quality jobs. The note does not intend to be comprehensive, but rather aims at compiling – under an integrative jobs umbrella and the regional framework on jobs – some of the available data and evidence on the Albanian jobs challenge, part of which was prepared for the Albania Systematic Country Diagnostic of the World Bank. By employing the regional report’s framework, the note can guide the Government, development partners, civil society and other stakeholders in identifying the many knowledge gaps that remain for a comprehensive jobs agenda and the work needed towards completing the picture.

Facing the prospects of rapid aging and demographic decline over the coming decades, Hungary needs a highly skilled workforce to help generate the productivity growth that it needs to continue fueling a convergence of its living standards with those of its West European neighbors. Skilling up Hungary’s workforce should start by equipping youth with the right cognitive and social-emotional foundation skills. International research has identified three dimensions of skills that matter for good employment outcomes and economic growth: cognitive skills, such as literacy, numeracy, creative and critical thinking, and problem-solving; social-emotional skills and behavioral traits, such as conscientiousness, grit, and openness to experience; and job- or occupation-specific technical skills, such as the ability to work as an engineer. Hungary can do significantly better in preparing its next generation with the right cognitive foundation skills. This report focuses on cognitive skills and examines results for Hungary from the program for international student assessment (PISA), which assesses the mathematics, reading, and science competencies of 15-year-olds. This report lays out a policy agenda consisting of two parallel elements: first, improving socioeconomic conditions for children and youth in general and in school through policies targeted to the poor and disadvantaged such as welfare and employment policies for parents and education support for children. Second, promoting equity and reducing socioeconomic segregation in basic education through inclusive education policies.

This report provides an overview of jobs,workers, and employment opportunities in Nigeria, using recent household data. Jobs are critical for Nigeria’s present and future, as better jobs and income-earning opportunities form the basis for more diversified economic growth, poverty reduction, and greater prosperity. This report relies heavily on the wealth of information gathered through the General Household Survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics. The diagnostics included in this report are intended to describe the landscape of jobs in the country and provide broad analysis as an input into the development of a jobs strategy for Nigeria. The analysis conducted for this report has highlighted three areas that need attention: (i) data quality issues, as shown in the several rounds of data cleaning needed to provide consistent statistics; (ii) poor documentation and archiving, which prevented the use of several rounds of the household survey, especially to produce national-level statistics using population weights; and (iii) standardization, to permit comparisons of key variables over time and track the impact of policy changes and other events. As shown in this report, many Nigerians work, but generally in low-earning activities. Most work opportunities in the country are informal and do not come with a wage. This report presents an updated picture of jobs in Nigeria and identifies opportunities for improving the quality of jobs. This report has shown that Nigeria combines middle-income status and Africa’s largest economic power with high poverty levels, largely because the main sectors of economic growth are disconnected from the sectors that provide employment, notably subsistence activities in the agricultural and services sectors. Finally, the diagnostics included in this report show that both new and existing jobs, whether in agriculture or other sectors, will need to be more productive to help the population move out of low-earning employment and poverty.

Getting youth into productive employment is an urgent policy issue for countries around the world. Many governments in low and middle-income countries are actively engaged in policies to help youth attain the skills they need to do well in work and in life, as well as to find suitable employment. The involvement of the private sector in youth skills development and employment is a complex issue because the nature of the firms and their motivations vary significantly. Multinational corporations operating in low and middle-income countries may be motivated by direct productivity or profit objectives - to secure a skilled workforce, or reliable suppliers - but also, or even primarily, by corporate social responsibility (CSR) factors. Firms that supply training or employment services will be driven by profit considerations when entering these markets and deciding what services to offer and to whom. The purpose of this paper is threefold: (1) to provide a comprehensive look at the way the private sector is involved in youth skills and employment in low- and middle-income countries, considering the broad range of program types and firm types; (2) to present and interpret the available evidence of the effectiveness of this involvement; and (3) to understand where the private sector has been most effective at promoting young people’s labor market success, and what can be done to enhance the role of the private sector to achieve this objective. The report is organized as follows: chapter one gives introduction. Chapter two provides background to the analysis of the private sector role in youth employment in low- and middle-income countries. In chapter three the authors characterize the private sector’s role more systematically using the youth employment inventory, a global database of interventions that are designed to integrate young people into the labor market. Chapter four reviews the evidence of effectiveness of youth interventions involving the private sector. Chapter five briefly draws together strands from the previous review, as well as from the broader literature, to gain an understanding of the institutional and other factors leading to (and in other cases preventing) successful public-private partnerships for youth employment. Chapter six summarizes the main findings of this review, and is followed by a discussion of key gaps in knowledge on the role of the private sector in different types of youth employment intervention that future research should attempt to address, and a review of the main lessons for policy and programming emerging from the study.

Uzbekistan is a lower middle-income country located in Central Asia with a population of 30 million people and an economy that has been growing by over 8 percent per annum since the mid-2000s. The composition of the workforce has also changed dramatically in recent years. The higher education system is characterized by low access and concerns about the quality and relevance of the skills of its graduates. A recent regional skills study concluded that Uzbekistan is experiencing a substantial shortage of university graduates. The internal management of the higher education system is fragmented, with different actors having overlapping responsibilities, thereby making it difficult to ensure system-wide accountability. In order to enable the Uzbek higher education system to serve the economy and student population well, the quality assurance system should be compliant with global best practices while remaining locally relevant. While reported overall state budget spending on education, at around 8 percent of GDP, is one of the highest in the world, the share of this spending on tertiary education, at around 0.4 percent of GDP, is one the lowest. In summary, Uzbekistan’s higher education system needs to modernize to better adapt to needs of the country’s economy. The report, having analyzed the sector in detail, proposes measures to modernize the higher education sector in Uzbekistan.

This joint study, by the World Bank and the Turkish Ministry of Development, explores the status and effects of good jobs in Turkey s current economy. After a brief account of economic events, it examines the relationship between growth and employment in Turkey, with a particular regard to the participation of different social groups in the labor market, such as women and youth. It then analyzes where jobs are being created and which activities are the most productive for the Turkish economy, and assesses if jobs have moved to more productive activities in recent years. Finally, the report proceeds to measure the impact of different types of jobs on the welfare of an entire household and on the household s relative position in the overall income distribution.

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 to employ a workforce, which will grow by an estimated 20 million workers over the next ten years. Today's policy makers in Indonesia face a strategic challenge in identifying which policies and programs will spur the creation of good jobs while, at the same time, ensuring that workers are better protected from risks threatening their income security. Decisions about labor policies are particularly difficult because they can directly affect the well-being of workers, both inside and outside the formal jobs market, and the firms that are the main engines of job growth. Sound empirical data will help guide the debate around labor reform. The Indonesia jobs report, prepared by the World Bank in cooperation with the Government of Indonesia and local research partners, is the most comprehensive assessment of the country's labor market that has been carried out in the last decade. The report uses the most up-to-date data available to examine the performance of the labor market, changes in the supply of workers, and the effects of labor policies. The findings will help inform future policy directions and contribute towards evidence-based decision making. Stimulating the growth of better jobs requires a multi-pronged approach. This report recommends much needed reforms of labor policies and programs. Equally important, however, are reforms that accelerate job creation by improving infrastructure and the investment climate, alongside reforms that aim at improving the quality of education. Success will depend on working partnerships between the government, employer associations, labor unions and other civil society groups, with the support of Indonesia's think tanks and international development partners. This report helps reinvigorate policy dialogue about job creation and worker security. Learning from experiences and international best practices, Indonesia will be better prepared to navigate a course towards 'win-win' solutions that accelerate the creation of better jobs without sacrificing adequate protection for workers.

Since first recognized in the early 1970s, the informal sector of Sub?Saharan Africa has become a growing source of employment for large numbers of youths, but also older workers pursuing entrepreneurial goals and others adjusting to structural changes in the region's employment. Initially viewed as a safety net for those unable to find employment in the modern sector, the image of the informal sector has begun to change with time and the education of those entering it. More workers have begun to view it, not as a temporary stop while searching for employment in the formal wage economy, but as a preferred destination offering opportunities to those wanting to become entrepreneurs. The chapter examines recent research covering measurement of employment in the informal sector, impediments to investing in skills within the sector, and policies and programs to expand this investment. It extends earlier work on this topic done under auspices of the World Bank. The purpose is to examine what is currently known about these issues, identify gaps in knowledge, and offer a strategy for expanding skills development in the informal sector. Recent research, for example, like that mentioned above in Ghana showing the changing character of employment in the informal sector and the prospect of growing returns to skills casts a new light on employment in this sector and merits further inquiry into the robustness of these findings in other countries to deepen our understanding of how skills influence the welfare of those who create their own employment in the informal sector and how the investment in skills can be expanded.