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The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a dramatic disruption in the delivery of education and health services in the Philippines. With school closures and challenges in the delivery of distance learning, students learning losses are expected to be enormous. Meanwhile, the health system is strained under the challenge of management of Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases which likely crowd out the delivery of essential health services. This note, a third note of the series using the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Low Income Household Panel and Economic (HOPE) Survey, investigates the impact of the pandemic on education and health behaviors as well as other welfare indicators of low-income households in the Philippines.

This multisectoral Jobs Diagnostic provides a comprehensive overview of Pakistan's job market, with the aim of informing key policy areas. It investigates a host of factors associated with labor outcomes, such as the general macroeconomic environment and job-specific conditions, workers' education and skill levels, labor market segmentation and disparities, structural transformation, and workers' mobility. It highlights issues related to job creation, quality, and access by looking at past and present trends in the labor market. It also provides a global and regional comparison of key dimensions of the job market, in an effort to assess Pakistan's position. Finally, it highlights a prioritized set of interventions to address key priorities on the jobs agenda that will focus on quantity, quality, and inclusiveness of jobs.

The number of individuals who have crossed borders has mushroomed over recent years. The phenomenon of international migration, however, is heterogeneous in terms of the underlying motives and aspirations of migrants. Forced international migrants are involuntarily displaced refugees who flee conflict, violence, or persecution across an international border. Voluntary migrants can additionally be classified into two categories: (i) temporary labor migrants who migrate for economic reasons for a fixed duration of time, and (ii) immigrants who move with the intention of changing their country of residence, due to factors such as wanting to reunite with family or to benefit economically. Bilateral labor agreements (BLAs) between sending and receiving countries are institutional tools designed to facilitate migratory flows and maximize the potential benefits of temporary international migration for all concerned. This study focuses on the employment permit system (EPS) in Korea, a temporary migration program for low-skilled workers considered a good global practice among efforts toward the goal of co-development - that is, the mutual benefit of both sending and receiving nations. The EPS has accomplished several remarkable achievements, including a drastic reduction in migrants’ cost burden, enhanced transparency, reduction in the share of workers overstaying, and improved access to worker protection. The process used to match employers and temporary labor migrants also merits significant improvement.

Evidence on the effectiveness of workfare as an anti-poverty program in developing countries is weak compared with the relatively well-established role of public works during economic crisis as a social safety net. This paper contributes to evidence building by examining the impact of a large-scale workfare program in Bangladesh, the Employment Generation Program for the Poorest. Taking advantage of the program's distinguishable feature of direct wage transfer to a person's bank account, the paper uses accessibility to local banks as an instrumental variable to identify the program's impacts on rural social assistance beneficiaries. Based on locality-by-time fixed effects models over two rounds of locality panel data, the analysis finds that the Employment Generation Program for the Poorest has contributed to increasing overall household consumption and reducing outstanding loans. In particular, expenditures on quality food and health care have significantly increased, which likely helps individuals continue to engage in income-generating activities in the labor market. However, the implementation costs and poor quality of public assets built through work projects could potentially undermine the program's efficiency. Moreover, further evidence is required on the impacts of work experience through workfare on subsequent labor market outcomes and the value of public assets, to assess the program's effectiveness compared with administratively simpler alternative instruments such as unconditional cash transfers.

This Jobs Diagnostic presents the characteristics and constraints of the labor market in Bangladesh, identifies the objectives of the jobs agenda, and proposes a policy framework to progress toward them. This multisectoral diagnostic assesses the relationships between supply- and demand-side factors that interact to determine job creation, quality, and inclusion outcomes. Understanding the factors that influence jobs outcomes requires a holistic approach capturing issues such as access to markets, inputs, capital, technology, skills, and matching of supply and demand. Standard labor analysis tends to miss crucial aspects of the demand side of job creation, while growth diagnostics have no direct link to jobs. The Jobs Diagnostic thus intends to provide the comprehensive evidence base to support the development of a national jobs strategy that focuses on policies to foster an environment for more, better, inclusive jobs in Bangladesh.

Mozambique is experiencing significant population growth with a growing number of youth (ages 15-34) into the labor market. The surge of the raw number of individuals, particularly young people, opens both challenges and opportunities: challenges, because of the need to create sufficient jobs to employ new entrants; opportunities, because if well managed, the country will benefit from a young, dynamic labor market where innovations and creative activities serve as an engine of growth, driving up per capita income and standards of living. The paper is organized as follows. The first two sections describe the supply and demand side diagnostics of the labor market, respectively, by analyzing the profiles of workers and by examining where jobs are being created. The next section discusses the determinants of employment, type of work, and earnings. Based on this analysis of the trends and labor market outcomes, the last section identifies and discusses key areas of policy interventions.

Since the mid-1990s, Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced unprecedented levels of high economic growth. A key question follows: What accounts for the turnaround of the growth performance in the mid-1990s? The answer can provide insight into whether the recent growth spurt in Sub-Saharan Africa is merely temporary or the beginning of a sustainable takeoff. This paper examines the sources of growth of 32 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in a growth accounting framework. The findings suggest that the recent growth spurt is largely associated with an increase in the share of working-age population, capital accumulation, and total factor productivity, unlike previous periods. Resources play a role by attracting capital inflows, particularly from foreign direct investment and shifting labor away from agriculture. However, the growth prospects for Sub-Saharan Africa seem promising beyond resources, with steady progress in decreased fertility, increased foreign direct investment, political stability, and structural transformation.

We provide experimental evidence on the effects of vocational and entrepreneurial training for Malawian youth, in an environment where access to schooling and formal sector employment is extremely low. We track a large fraction of program drop-outs - a common phenomenon in the training evaluation literature - and this allows us to examine the determinants and consequences of drop-out and how it mediates the effects of such programs. We find that women make decisions in a more constrained environment, and their participation affected by family obligations. Participation is more expensive for them, resulting in worse training experience. The training results in skills development, continued investment in human capital, and improved well-being, with more positive effects for men, but no improvements in labor market outcomes in the short run.

This paper provides a synthetic and systematic review on the effectiveness of various entrepreneurship programs in developing countries. We adopt a meta-regression analysis using 37 impact evaluation studies that were in the public domain by March 2012, and draw out several lessons on the design of the programs. We observe a wide variation in program effectiveness across different interventions depending on outcomes, types of beneficiaries, and country context. Overall, entrepreneurship programs have a positive and large impact for youth and on business knowledge and practice, but no immediate translation into business set-up and expansion or increased income. At a disaggregate level by outcome groups, providing a package of training and financing is more effective for labor activities. Additionally, financing support appears more effective for women and business training for existing entrepreneurs than other interventions to improve business performance.

This paper reviews labor market trends throughout the developing world, identifies issues and policy priorities across groups of countries, and derives implications for the World Bank's new social protection and labor strategy. Five key issues are identified: a high and growingshare of the labor force that is self?employed or working in household enterprises, exposure to income shocks with limited access to risk management systems, low female participation rates, high youth unemployment rates, and the need to manage migration flows and remittances. The paper then details a three pronged agenda based on providing incentives and conditions for work, improving the efficiency of job creation, and managing risks / facilitating labor market transitions. This suggests that the Bank should emphasize self?employment and entrepreneurship promotion, provision of skills and development opportunities, and facilitation of labor market transitions into and between jobs, while protecting workers from shocks and paying particular attention to youth.

This paper assesses labor market trends and outcomes in Pakistan over the past decade. It shows that despite a high rate of employment growth, labor market outcomes have been disappointing: most jobs have been created in low productivity sectors/activities, and even if they provide a minimum level of income to often avoid poverty, they remain low quality jobs providing little or no protection to workers against shocks. In addition, female participation rates for women are very low and there are large income disparities between rural and urban areas, and across sectors. A fundamental part of the problem is the low level of education of the labor force. Pakistan is currently in the midst of a demographic transition that is bringing a growing number of youth into the labor market. This youth bulge that is unwinding opens both challenges and opportunities. Challenges because of the need to create enough jobs to employ new entrants; Opportunities, because if this is done the country will enjoy a demographic dividend , as the share of those employed relative to the dependent increases, driving up income per capita and standards of living.

The informal sector is generally believed to be more vulnerable to various risks due to limited access to social insurance, but little empirical evidence exists to support this statement. This paper examines the relationship between informality and protection from health risks in Yemen. The formal sector, when defined based on pension coverage, largely overlaps with public employment where the better educated, more experienced, and better informed tend to work. The results indicate that, even after accounting for socio-economic status, water supply and quality conditions, risky behavior patterns, and unobserved heterogeneity, formal sector households have better accessibility and affordability to health service. This may in part explain better health outcomes among formal households, although large heterogeneity across regions (urban/rural) exists. However, the role of the existing health insurance is found to be unclear. The findings reconfirm the importance of policies that promote universal access to health service and a risk pooling avenue delinked from employment types as well as healthy living conditions and lifestyles.

This paper examines how different types of workers in 17 middle-income countries were affected by labor market retrenchment during the great recession. Impacts on different types of workers varied by country and were only weakly related to the severity of the shock. Among active workers, youth experienced by far the largest adverse impacts on employment, unemployment, and wage employment, particularly relative to older adults. The percentage employment reductions, for example, were greatest for youth in each sector of the economy, as firms reacted to the shock by substituting away from inexperienced workers. Employment rates, as a share of the population, also plummeted for men. Larger drops in male employment were primarily attributable to men's higher initial rate of employment, although men's concentration in the hard-hit industrial sector also played an important role. Within each sector, percentage employment declines were similar for men and women. Added worker effects among women were mild, even among less-educated workers. Differences in labor market outcomes across education groups and urban or rural residence tended to be smaller. These findings bolster the case for targeted support to displaced youth and wage employees. Programs targeted to female and unskilled workers should be undertaken with appropriate caution or empirical support from timely data, as they may not benefit the majority of affected workers.