Technical/Vocational

Youth unemployment rates in the Middle East and North Africa region currently 31 percent are the highest in the world. For female youth in the region, the figure rises to 48 percent. Along with the need for more jobs, a major factor is the mismatch between the type of skills being taught in the classroom, which are largely theoretical, and those required by the private sector. In Jordan, the Luminus Education Group is addressing this issue with support from IFC.

This paper uses Labor Force Survey data to assess key aspects of the labor market in Vietnam over 2007-14. The analysis finds large growth in wage employment in the foreign-owned and domestic private sectors. However, the state sector remains a major employer, particularly for workers with higher education, employing 70 percent of wage workers with a university degree. Low-skilled occupations dominate the stock of existing jobs, but the top growing occupations overwhelmingly belong to high-skilled categories.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with young women and men in rural and urban Brazil, this qualitative research explores gender dimensions in the causes and consequences of being "out of work and out of school." A key conclusion from this research is that this term (or the Portuguese: "nem-nem") does not translate well the complex realities of this highly heterogeneous group.

Standard skills indicators leave an information gap on workforce skill characteristics, job skill requirements, and quality of worker-job matches that prevents policymakers from making informed and timely decisions on training and education for current and future employees. Thus, there is growing interest on measures of cognitive, socio-emotional (non-cognitive), and technical skills to analyze determinants of skills formation, economic decisions and labor market outcomes.

The study benchmarks policies and practices in the community’s workforce development system against international good practices. Specifically, it assesses policies, practices and institutional arrangements, and identifies measures that contributed to workforce development. The study takes advantage of the World Bank’s workforce development diagnostic tool, which is part of the Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) initiative.

This note provides practical solutions for addressing the labor-related barriers that impede Bhutan's private sector employment growth: (i) lack of workers with relevant experience and skills, (ii) restrictions on employing non-Bhutanese workers, and (iii) lack of interest among Bhutanese workers in private sector employment opportunities (Enterprise Survey 2015).

This note provides practical solutions for addressing the labor-related barriers that impede Bhutan's private sector employment growth: (i) lack of workers with relevant experience and skills, (ii) restrictions on employing non-Bhutanese workers, and (iii) lack of interest among Bhutanese workers in private sector employment opportunities (Enterprise Survey 2015).