Today, jobs are a critical concern across the globe—for policy makers, the business community,
and the billions of men and women striving to provide for their families.
As the world struggles to emerge from the global crisis, some 200 million people—including 75 million under the age of 25—are unemployed. Many millions more, most of them
women, find themselves shut out of the labor force altogether. Looking forward, over the next
15 years an additional 600 million new jobs will be needed to absorb burgeoning working-age
populations, mainly in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Meanwhile, almost half of all workers in developing countries are engaged in small-scale
farming or self-employment, jobs that typically do not come with a steady paycheck and benefits. The problem for most poor people in these countries is not the lack of a job or too few
hours of work; many hold more than one job and work long hours. Yet, too often, they are not
earning enough to secure a better future for themselves and their children, and at times they
are working in unsafe conditions and without the protection of their basic rights.
Jobs are instrumental to achieving economic and social development. Beyond their critical
importance for individual well-being, they lie at the heart of many broader societal objectives, such as poverty reduction, economy-wide productivity growth, and social cohesion. The
development payoffs from jobs include acquiring skills, empowering women, and stabilizing
post-conflict societies. Jobs that contribute to these broader goals are valuable not only for
those who hold them but for society as a whole: they are good jobs for development.
The World Development Report 2013 takes the centrality of jobs in the development process as its starting point and challenges and reframes how we think about work. more
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