Related Content

The dubious and unlawful practices of letterbox companies should be reviewed to protect workers, customers and genuine economic actors.

Western European states are facing continued budget cuts and restructuring of their health policies. The result is an increasingly informal, decentralized and often more expensive health care provision for those in need of care. As less public bud…

Labour market policy has been one of the few levers available to different Eurozone countries to improve external competitiveness.

Import competition, offshoring and automation are threatening the middle classes in Europe. New jobs have been created mainly for the lower and the upper segments of the labour market. But not for the middle. And because most of those jobs are in…

Occupational change in itself cannot explain the decline of the European middle class. But it could be a threat to its sociopolitical foundations

The middle class is not a homogeneous group. The segments within it respond differently to economic globalization, with the lower middle class heading towards the poorest. Although social protection schemes can go a long way to compensate for thei…

Technology is likely to substantially reshape labour markets in the future, dramatically altering the kinds of skills that middle-class workers will need. As such, policymakers must act now.

You can read it in the newspapers every day: national economies are not creating enough jobs and fewer quality jobs in the productive sectors. Globalization, automation and financialization of the economy have been identified as the drivers of cur…

Linking precarious work to the debate on income inequality shows that precarious work not only affects the ‘losers’ of globalization, but also the ‘winners’.

It is a political choice to allow the spread of insecure employment conditions, for example by deregulating the relationship between employers and employees. It is also a political choice to reverse this trend, but one that requires a broader unde…

Rural wages are rising in Asia, and the strongest drivers are demographic changes and the growth of manufacturing.

When the Dutch private sector is involved in development in Africa, a dilemma may arise. The Dutch government claims that businesses could have a positive impact on local economic development on the continent in the longer term. But do their activ…

The stagnation in labour demand in the US is linked to the rise of finance. Strategies to encourage long-term employment growth must be found in that direction too.

Egypt has invested in its female labour force since the 1960s. Yet women-led businesses remain rare. Alia El Mahdi provides insight into the underlying challenges and gives policy recommendations for the effective promotion of female entrepreneurs.

International trade can contribute to the creation of more and better jobs but not always, not for everyone, and not everywhere. Thirty years after the beginning of a global push for liberalization we are finally starting to understand the real co…

While the long-term benefits of freer trade for the domestic labour market seem indisputable, it is politically contestable over the short- and medium-run.

The TTIP will lead to at least a million job losses and threaten labour standards in US and EU.

The impact of the TTIP on employment in Europe and the US would be minimal, or even negative.

US citizens have found themselves on the short end of the stick too many times to believe that the TTIP will create more jobs.

The bilateral setting of the TTIP makes its outcome subject to two specific opposing forces.

The implications of TTIP for employment are uncertain for the EU and US, but also for developing countries.

EPAs can be a good launchpad to foster more productive employment in Africa, but should not be an end in itself.

Specific policy is needed to respond to the loss of social control over employment.

The US may be witnessing the beginning of a return to stakeholder capitalism.

Changes in the global economy and in technology influence employment in the manufacturing sector, especially by requiring new skills.

In an increasingly globalized world which places downward pressure on nominal wages, monetary policy should permit the rewards of productivity growth to be passed on to workers in the form of falling prices. Targeting nominal income growth to equa…

Evidence shows that technological change and productivity growth do not only destroy jobs in Europe and the US, but also create them.

Developing a stable and decent labour market is a matter of willingness and making choices.

The adverse effects of increased economic integration on job quality can be mitigated by flexicurity policies.

Piketty largely ignores what the concentration of wealth means for decision-making on economic development. We should focus on distributing wealth, for example by making employees shareholders of their own companies.

Inequality and declining job quality have been driven mainly by government policies, so reforming policy is now needed.

Europe has to start investing in people instead of destroying its growth potential if it wants to create more and better jobs.

Making people producers of goods is strategic for growth and development.

What are the challenges, what are the options regarding youth unemployment in Africa?

With a demographic shift ahead, Europe has to increase productivity and employment rates and structurally reform the labour market.

The central theme of The Broker Day 2014 on 14 April was employment and inequality, and the structural macroeconomic problems underlying them. The main speaker was Minister of Social Affairs and Employment and deputy prime minister Lodewijk Assche…

More green investment can stimulate growth and employment in a crisis-ridden Europe, and reverse recent negative trends in the climate change mitigation progress.

The following proposal is aimed at employment creation in the light of the alarming indices of labour market exclusion from which different parts of the world suffer.

The key to avoiding the risk of a jobless recovery in Southern Europe lies in the combination of wage flexibility and human capital accumulation.

Recognizing employment as a fundamental human right is the most important policy to promote full employment.

Impact sourcing is a promising means to enhance employment and training opportunities for the poor and underprivileged.

Employment is a critical path to women’s economic empowerment, but it is by no means a simple relationship.

Elements of the decent work agenda can improve employment conditions worldwide, but current neo-liberalist policies are counterproductive.

The Broker has started an online debate and a live discussion on how to tackle employment issues and further addressing the policies needed for an employment-generated economic growth. Can solutions be found within the current economic model, or&n…;

Over 200 million people worldwide are officially unemployed and looking for work. A much larger number of people, however, has a job, but one that is uncertain, unstable and precarious and does not help them out of poverty. Rising economic growth…

To solve the structural problems related to unemployment, a radical policy shift is needed. Innovation policies must focus on job-intensive sectors. Governments must curb free capital flows with more regulation and stimulate financial institutions…

The creation of more decent jobs should be central to economic policies. The prevailing assumption that GDP growth alone will generate more decent work is not valid. And it obstructs the creation of a society in which labour serves and dignifies b…

A growing number of people in the industrialized world work under insecure employment conditions. This is due to increasing labour market flexibility, which has influenced the nature of employment and the related power relations. This fundamental…

Welcome to The Broker’s dossier on employment. Global employment trends can be confusing. For example, they show an increase in the numbers of unemployed people while at the same time an increase in the amount of jobs. Population growth alone cann…

The international discussion on the changing nature of jobs and employment is taking place on many levels. The table here contains a number of institutional reports, research papers and other sources that The Broker’s editors have found useful in…

The belief that economic growth– together with low inflation rates, technological innovations and good education–is enough to create all the jobs a country needs, is in decline. The reality now is that technology is improving so fast that better e…

In many countries the share of labour in national income has declined over the last three decades. As a result, the low and middle-income groups of people who depend the most on wages for their income are crumbling. Meanwhile, the rich elites who…

Who benefits or loses from globalization is no longer based on the sector in which one works or the skill group one belongs to. Ongoing technological innovations have enabled greater global competition for a number of jobs. The key challenge for i…

Developing countries should go for regional trading agreements until they raise the overall skill levels of their populations.

Social protection schemes look very different across the world. They traditionally protect people from income fall after shocks. But some programmes have higher aims: increasing the economic opportunities and promoting the potential of those who a…

With only a quarter of the world’s population having access to social protection, the case for expanding it is gaining ground in international discussions. The debate focuses on how best to design social protection, whether it should be universal…

The new World Bank strategy must take risk and uncertainty into account.

3 and 4 October, the UN General Assembly in New York discusses the global governance of international migration and development. A key theme will be the “mainstreaming of human rights into all aspects of the migration debate”. With so few countrie…

In spite of the ongoing euro crisis, which does not leave much space for an ambitious global agenda, the EU remains a major global development actor.

More than 80% of labour disputes in China are solved through mediation, but the processes do not eliminate the antagonism.

Economic growth should go hand in hand with an improvement in wage share and vice versa. However, current economic policy does not.

A Glimpse Into Life Stories in the World’s Factory – Part 2 on migrant workersFor ethical reasons relating to the author’s ongoing research, the names of the town and the people in this article are all fictitious.In part 1 of this blog, I dis…

If China is the world’s factory, then Qingyang town represents the forefront of production.

An inclusive economy requires economic democracy. The development of a solidarity economy should be a key element.

Trade unions are crucial in transforming the economy since they fight for the democratic inclusion of all participants.

The failure of effective direct taxation is the central explanation for much higher final income inequality. Therefore Cobham and Sumner argue in favour of more fairness in tax systems through metrics.

Given the increase of income inequality over the past decades, legitimizing the global market on the basis of the proliferation of free trade is questionable. Reducing wage inequality would however challenge the very foundations of free trade theory.

Is brain-drain counter-balanced by remittances and returning émigrés?

The news is spreading: China’s new generation of migrant workers in the booming export industry are roaring their voice. The number and intensity of protests is on the rise in China’s urban industrial areas. Read for example Reuters’ special repor…

In my address to the International Society for Ecological Economics I argued that to reduce ecological footprint and solve the unemployment crisis, hours of work should be reduced. This shares the available work and reduces pressure on eco-systems…

The ISEE 2010 Tuesday sessions by Tim Jackson and Juliet Schor hit on the heart of the economic model (accumulation, growth and consumerism) by proposing innovative visions of how to reform capitalism towards human well-being.Before the talk start…

Despite the lack of policy progress on climate change and ecosystem degradation there is no shortage of solutions currently on offer. While the specifics may differ, those getting most attention share one characteristic—they focus on technological…

This selection of videos shows participants at the Second International Conference on Degrowth, discussing the idea of sustainable degrowth and their impressions from the conference. The conference took place in Barcelona in March 2010 and was cov…

Rebound effects and growth have been leading to a failure of the efficiency concept to deliver sustainability. How to overcome the addiction of society to growth?A 12 step method was proposed for a recovery process, including admitting the lock-in…

In developing countries, the current economic crisis has led to a decline in exports of goods such as textiles and to a reduction in foreign investments. However, exports of IT-related services could be on the increase.