Download Toolkit for Mainstreaming Employment and Decent

Employment for Women and Youth:
Challenges and Solutions
AU Pre-Event on Ouaga + 10
Country Club, Windhoek, Namibia
22 April 2014
Michael Mwasikakata
Employment Policy Specialist
ILO DWT Pretoria
STRUCTURE OF PRESENTATION
 Youth and Women Employment: Situation
Analysis
 Binding Constraints to Creation of Productive and
Decent Employment for Women and Youth
 Proposed strategies for promoting youth
and women employment
 Conclusions
Youth and Women Employment Trends
• Globally, youth unemployment continues to rise, reaching 74.5million in
2013, or 13.1%, almost three times the adult rate. In North Africa: 29%;
SSA: 11.9% (GET 2014)
• The NEET are on the rise, in some countries reaching a quarter of the 1529 youth
• In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) young people (15-24 years) are twice as likely
to be unemployed as adults. In North Africa almost 3.5 times.
 The youth are not a homogeneous group, young women are more likely to
be unemployed than young men: by 0.7 percentage points globally in
2013, 19.8 and 1.6 in N.Afr and SSA, respectively. Situation likely to
worsen
 Labour absorption rates for women trail behind men: Gaps in employment
to population ratios for women across the globe not significantly
improving, if not worsening
• Middle East and North Africa are hardest hit and situation expected to
remain constant to 2018
Youth and Women Employment Trends
STWS results (from SSA)
• 40% of young people aged 15-29 are in school
• Unemployment tend to increase with education-queuing for public
sector jobs
• However the more educated have better wages and stable jobs
• Most youths are in precarious employment (70% self-employed),
only 25% of the remaining 30% are in standard employment
relationships
• Informal employment is standard condition for the youth in the
survey countries
• Youth labour underutilization is as high as 70%
• High skills mismatch – 53% under qualified for their jobs
• Agriculture and services are the main sectors for the youth, industry
underdeveloped in many countries
• Less than 10% of the youth use standard job-search methods, most
rely on friends and relatives
Women face the brunt across the board
• According to GET 2012 for Women, there are serious gender gaps
with regard to labour force participation rates, employment
absorption, unemployment, sectoral and occupational
distribution with women being concentrated in agriculture and
services and low paying and status occupations, and vulnerability
• The school to work transition surveys (STWS) undertaken in a
sample SSA countries in 2013/14 confirm the gender inequalities
among the youth
• Gender gaps in labour supply worsening :Women (youth and
adult) are more likely to be outside the labour force in noneconomic care economy than men
• The lower gaps in SSA reflect more the high level of poverty than
gender equality as women have to fend for their families
• Young women predominantly in elementary occupations, mostly
own-account and family workers, more likely to be self-employed,
in irregular employment, earn less.
• All is not lost however, situation is improving, gender gaps in
sectoral distribution are tending towards zero in agriculture in
Sub-Saharan Africa
The youth are highly affected by HIV
and AIDS pandemic
• The revealed high rates of precarious employment and working poverty
among young people makes young people particularly vulnerable to HIV.
• Young PLWHIV find it hard to access employment, even though they have
the necessary competencies and skills. They are often denied employment
if they are found to be HIV+
• SSA, young people aged 15-24 accounted for 39% of the 2 million new HIV
infections registered in 2012. High rate of new infections has serious
implications for enterprise productivity today as well as for the workforce
of tomorrow.
• Knowledge about HIV prevention among young people remains low (36%
for young men and 28% for young women). Young women and girls
account for 68% of all young people living with HIV.
•
Young people often have less access to high quality HIV prevention,
treatment and care than their adult counterparts.
Binding Constraints to Youth and
Women Decent Employment
• Low labour absportion capacity of economies due to
low/inadequate growth, pattern of growth and low labour
intensity
• Poor and inconsistent macroeconomic, sectoral and labour
market policies
• Low and mismatched qualifications and skills, low capabilities
• Poor and unequal access to financing, entrepreneurship and
business development services
• Inadequate coverage and application of social protection and
rights at work laws and policies
• Inequality and HIV/AIDS effects at the household and
workplace levels
Policies to promote productive and decent
employment for youth and women
 Stimulate demand and create jobs for youth and women through
pro-employment macroeconomic policies
 Invest in education and training to enhance employability,
capabilities and facilitate the school-to-work transition
 Improve labour market integration of young people and women
through targeted labour market policies
 Provide career options to young people and women by supporting
entrepreneurship and self-employment
 Ensure that young people and women receive equal treatment and
are afforded rights at work
 Address root causes of discrimination and inequality from the
household to workplace level: youth and women empowerment
 Concerted efforts by governments, employers and workers
organizations to combat HIV/AIDS at the workplace
Policies for youth and women employment
Instruments for policy-making
• Policy measures should be balanced and adapted to countryspecific needs
Multi-pronged and balanced
strategies for growth and job
creation
Apprenticeships, skills training and
other work-training programmes
Targeted youth & women
employment action through
tripartite consensus and time-bound
action plans
Employment services
Comprehensive packages of labour
market measures targeting specific
groups of women & young people
Platforms for exchanging knowledge
and lessons of what works
Policiy
measures
Multiple services for
entrepreneurship, social enterprises
and cooperatives development
Bipartite and tripartite cooperation
Pro-employment macroeconomic policies to
support job growth
• Ouaga 2004 committed to place employment as one of the
central objectives of economic and social policies
• In 2007 at the 11th African Regional Meeting of the ILO member
states committed to the decent work agenda and to targeting
employment as one of central objectives of macroeconomic
policy
• While some member states have mainstreamed employment in
their national development policies, inconsistencies still remain
in that the focus of macroeconomic policy still remains on
stability- the single mandate
• This is reinforced by the regional economic blocks’s
macroeconomic convergence frameworks which have tight
targets on inflation, deficits, debts, external balance, etc
• This constrains member states’s policy space to implement
measures to stimulate job-rich growth
SADC Macroeconomic
Convergence framework
Finance and Investment Protocol Macroeconomic Targets
Indicators
Inflation annual rate
Fiscal Deficit/GDP
Public Debt/GDP
Current Account/GDP
2008
9.50%
5%
60%
9%
Year
2012
5%
3%
60%
9%
2018
3%
1%
60%
3%
Source: SADC, 2006. The Achievement of SADC Macroeconomic
Convergence Targets Assessment of Performance Reviews and
Implementation Plans
EAC Macroeconomic Convergence
framework
Year
2007-10
2011-14
Inflation annual rate
<5%
<5%
Fiscal Deficit/GDP (incl grants)<3%
<2%
Public Debt/GDP
sustainable sustainable
External reserves
>4 months >6 months
Current Account/GDP
sustainable sustainable
Indicators
Source: Kuteesa A, 2012. East African Regional Integration:
Challenges in Meeting Convergence Criteria for Monetary Union:
A Survey
COMESA Macroeconomic
Convergence framework
Revised Monetary Cooperation Programme of COMESA
Indicators
Criteria type
Inflation annual rate
5% Primary
Fiscal Deficit/GDP (Excl grants)
5%
Public Debt/GDP (bank financing)
0%
Growth
7% secondary
Current Account/GDP
sustainable
Source: Zeidy I, 2013. COMESA Experiences in Macroeconomic
Convergence
Rethinking Macropolicy framework
towards “ dual mandate”….
•
•
Move away from ‘single mandate’: Adopt ‘dual mandate’
Macropolicy managers should be (a) guardians of
stability and (b) active agents of development
• Interventions through
– counter-cyclical policies
– long-term sustainable financing of core development
goals
– financial inclusion
– prudent exchange rate regime and capital account
management
• Leads to ‘enabling environment’ to promote inclusive
growth and structural transformation
Monetary Policy
Reasonable price
stability
Growth-inflation
trade-off
Supply-side
shocks,
especially food &
energy prices
Asset price
bubbles
Financial
inclusion
Enabling
environment
Structural
transformation
Fiscal Policy
Fiscal diamond
Sustainable
financing for
Discretionary
interventions,
e.g.stimulus
packages
Sustainable
financing for
Automatic
stabilizers
Conditional cash
transfers for
groups outside
labour market
Employment
guarantees /
unemployment
benefits
Infrastructure
Skills
Health
Enabling
environment
Structural
transformation
16
Fiscal Diamond as basis for resource
mobilization
1. External resources (% of GDP)
Proposed approach in brief
• Set employment targets in national development frameworks
and macroeconomic policies of central banks
• Carefully identify selected high productivity and labour
intensive sectors to promote
• Particularly valid for Africa, especially resource-rich
economies
• Natural resource sector capital intensive, adds a great deal to
GDP, creates a lot of revenue , but generates few jobs
• Hence, need to rely on other sectors to create jobs, especially
stable wage employment
• Implement labour market policies to integrate various
vulnerable groups in the labour market
Proposed approach in brief
• McKinsey (2012) projections: under a business as usual
scenario, the share of good jobs will increase from 28 % today
to 32 % by 2020
• Under a ‘jobs strategy’ with a sectoral focus, this proportion
expected to increase to 36 %
• In absolute terms, this means a projected ‘additional 18
million jobs over present growth levels’
• Sectoral strategies for employment promotion mean : (1)
Identification of key sectors and sub-sectors that have the
highest potential for creating stable wage employment; (2)
identification of the binding constraints that inhibit the
sectors from reaching full potential; (3) alleviating binding
constraints through appropriate policy interventions
Examples of policy interventions with potential to influence sector-led growth
and employment
Fiscal policy/public expenditure
management
•Resource mobilization to support
public investment in infrastructure,
education, health
•Fiscal incentives to reward private
sector activity with development payoffs
•Public procurement policies
Monetary policy/financial policies and
regulations
•Credit guarantee schemes
•Selective credit allocation
•‘Branchless banking’
•Microfinance institutions
Exchange rate regimes and capital
account management
•Stable and competitive real exchange
rate regimes
•Capital controls to deal with shortterm capital flows
Conclusions
• Youth and women productive and decent employment cannot be
separated from overall employment. However specific needs of these
groups should be addressed to ensure that they are not excluded
• The starting point is effective pro-employment macroeconomic policies
and sectoral policies to create an enabling environment for inclusive
growth and productive employment
• Employment targets in national development plans and macroeconomic
policies are critical
• Policy consistency and harmonization at regional and national level
(Agenda 2063; RECs Macroeconomic Convergence Frameworks, etc)
• Skills and capabilities development for employability
• Labour market policies are essential if tailored at specific needs of youth
and women and delivered as a package looking at both demand and
supply sides
THANK YOU
EMAIL: [email protected]