Employment in Crisis
Employment in Crisis

Author: Joana Silva

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2021-10-08

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1464816913

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A region known for its volatility, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has suffered severe economic and social setbacks from crises—including the COVID-19 pandemic. These crises have taken their toll on careers, wage growth, and productivity. Employment in Crisis: The Path to Better Jobs in a Post-COVID-19 Latin America provides new evidence on the effects of crises on the region’s workers and firms and suggests several policy responses that can bolster long-term and inclusive economic growth. This report has three key findings. First, crises lead to persistent employment losses and accelerate structural changes away from the formal sector. This change occurs more through reductions in the creation of formal jobs than through job destruction. Second, some workers recover from crises, while others are permanently scarred by them. Low-skilled workers can suffer up to a decade of lower earnings caused by crises, while high-skilled workers rebound fast, exacerbating the LAC region’s high level of inequality. Formal workers suffer smaller employment and wage losses in localities with higher rates of informality. And the reduced job flows caused by crises decrease welfare, but workers in localities with more job opportunities, whether formal or informal, bounce back better. Third, crises’ cleansing effects can increase efficiency and productivity, but these effects are dampened by the LAC region’s less competitive market structure. Rather than becoming more agile and productive during economic downturns, protected sectors and firms gain market share and crowd out others, trapping valuable resources. This report proposes a three-pronged mix of policies to improve the LAC region’s responses to crises: •Create a more stable macroeconomic environment to smooth the impacts of crises, including automatic stabilizers such as unemployment insurance and short-term compensation programs; •Increase the capacity of social protection and labor programs to respond to crises and coalesce these programs into systems that complement income support with reemployment assistance and reskilling opportunities; and •Tackle structural issues, including the lack of product market competition and the spatial dimension behind poor labor market adjustment—a “good jobs and good firms†? agenda.

Job Creation in Latin America and the Caribbean
Job Creation in Latin America and the Caribbean

Author: Carmen Pag s

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2009-06-19

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 0821380257

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More than a decade has passed since the introduction of comprehensive macroeconomic stabilization packages and trade, fiscal, and financial market reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, growth prospects remain disappointing; labor markets show lackluster performance, with low participation rates, high and persistent informality, and, in some cases, open unemployment. Creating viable and lasting employment is vital to reduce poverty and spread prosperity in the region. The failure to create more and more productive and rewarding jobs carries substantial political, social, and economic costs. 'Job Creation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Recent Trends and Policy Challenges' provides a thorough examination of the labor market trends in the region in recent decades and assesses the role that labor demand and labor supply factors have played in shaping these outcomes.

Law and Employment
Law and Employment

Author: James J. Heckman

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2007-11-01

Total Pages: 585

ISBN-13: 0226322858

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Law and Employment analyzes the effects of regulation and deregulation on Latin American labor markets and presents empirically grounded studies of the costs of regulation. Numerous labor regulations that were introduced or reformed in Latin America in the past thirty years have had important economic consequences. Nobel Prize-winning economist James J. Heckman and Carmen Pagés document the behavior of firms attempting to stay in business and be competitive while facing the high costs of complying with these labor laws. They challenge the prevailing view that labor market regulations affect only the distribution of labor incomes and have little or no impact on efficiency or the performance of labor markets. Using new micro-evidence, this volume shows that labor regulations reduce labor market turnover rates and flexibility, promote inequality, and discriminate against marginal workers. Along with in-depth studies of Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Jamaica, and Trinidad, Law and Employment provides comparative analysis of Latin American economies against a range of European countries and the United States. The book breaks new ground by quantifying not only the cost of regulation in Latin America, the Caribbean, and in the OECD, but also the broader impact of this regulation.

The Jobs of Tomorrow
The Jobs of Tomorrow

Author: Mark A. Dutz

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2018-04-10

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 1464812233

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While adoption of new technologies is understood to enhance long-term growth and average per-capita incomes, its impact on lower-skilled workers is more complex and merits clarification. Concerns abound that advanced technologies developed in high-income countries would inexorably lead to job losses of lower-skilled, less well-off workers and exacerbate inequality. Conversely, there are countervailing concerns that policies intended to protect jobs from technology advancement would themselves stultify progress and depress productivity. This book squarely addresses both sets of concerns with new research showing that adoption of digital technologies offers a pathway to more inclusive growth by increasing adopting firms’ outputs, with the jobs-enhancing impact of technology adoption assisted by growth-enhancing policies that foster sizable output expansion. The research reported here demonstrates with economic theory and data from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico that lower-skilled workers can benefit from adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies biased towards skilled workers, and often do. The inclusive jobs outcomes arise when the effects of increased productivity and expanding output overcome the substitution of workers for technology. While the substitution effect replaces some lower-skilled workers with new technology and more highly-skilled labor, the output effect can lead to an increase in the total number of jobs for less-skilled workers. Critically, output can increase sufficiently to increase jobs across all tasks and skill types within adopting firms, including jobs for lower-skilled workers, as long as lower-skilled task content remains complementary to new technologies and related occupations are not completely automated and replaced by machines. It is this channel for inclusive growth that underlies the power of pro-competitive enabling policies and institutions—such as regulations encouraging firms to compete and policies supporting the development of skills that technology augments rather than replaces—to ensure that the positive impact of technology adoption on productivity and lower-skilled workers is realized.

Going Viral
Going Viral

Author: Guillermo Beylis

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781464814488

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Following the so-called "Golden Decade" (2003-2013) of rapid development and strong improvements in social indicators, economic growth has stalled in Latin America and the Caribbean region (LAC). Today, the external environment no longer provides tailwinds to foster an economic rebound. Foreign direct investment has moderated, trade has slowed amid elevated tensions, financing conditions are tightening, and commodity prices are expected to remain flat in the short and medium term. The region therefore needs to find internal sources of growth and focus on a productivity-enhancing reform agenda. The report analyzes the structural transformation process in LAC and evaluates if the "premature de-industrialization" patterns observed in the data are a result of distortive policies or if they represent an efficient (i.e. growth maximizing) reallocation of resources responding to the underlying drivers of structural transformation. An important message of the report is that policy makers should not focus on sectoral size but rather on productivity growth. The emergence of new technologies--under the banner of the "4th Industrial Revolution"--suggests that opportunities for further industrialization or re-industrialization are likely to be limited in many developing countries. Looking forward, the region needs to develop a productivity agenda with a special focus on the services sector. Already the largest employer in the region with over 60 percent of the workforce, the services sector is expected to grow even further and play an increasingly crucial role as an input provider to the larger economy. In short, there is a need for a comprehensive set of service-sector oriented policies. The report concludes that three major economic forces are changing the nature of work and the demand for skills. First, the structural transformation process, in general, and the de-industrialization pattern observed for the economies in the region, in particular, imply that future job growth will occur mainly in the services sector. Second, the shift in economic structure is being accompanied by a transformation of the occupational structure within broad economic sectors. The importance of service occupations--those that produce intangible value added such as marketers, managers, designers--is increasing in all sectors of the economy. Third, as machines replace humans in carrying out simpler, more routine tasks, workers will have to adapt and perform a different set of tasks in the workplace. What may become more important as new automation technologies are adopted in LAC countries, is adult learning and re-training.

Better Pensions, Better Jobs
Better Pensions, Better Jobs

Author: Mariano Bosch

Publisher: Inter-American Development Bank

Published: 2013-10-16

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1597821780

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The Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region has reduced its inequality and poverty, and is looking towards the future with greater optimism than in the past. As the region grows, new problems appear that economic policymakers must address. How to provide adequate pensions for the elderly is one such problem. This book offers an analysis of pension systems from the perspective of the functioning of the regions labor markets. It clarifies why, more than half a century after pension systems were created, only a minority of workers in the region save for their pension in the contributory systems through payroll taxes. The study points out that the problem lies not only in the lack of coverage, but also in the low level of benefits, even of contributory pensions. It argues that to design public policies for pensions, it is essential to understand the complex web of interactions between employers and workers that take place in the labor market.

Firm Innovation and Productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean
Firm Innovation and Productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean

Author: Inter-American Development Bank

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-07-01

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 1349581518

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This volume uses the study of firm dynamics to investigate the factors preventing faster productivity growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, pushing past the limits of traditional macroeconomic analyses. Each chapter is dedicated to an examination of a different factor affecting firm productivity - innovation, ICT usage, on-the-job-training, firm age, access to credit, and international linkages - highlighting the differences in firm characteristics, behaviors, and strategies. By showcasing this remarkable heterogeneity, this collection challenges regional policymakers to look beyond one-size-fits-all solutions and create balanced policy mixes tailored to distinct firm needs. This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO license.

Economic Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean
Economic Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean

Author: Norman Loayza

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 0821360914

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Several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are suffering severe economic downturns and the success of market-oriented reforms is being called into question. This report seeks to contribute to the debate by examining the nature of economic growth in the region. The aim is threefold: to describe the basic characteristics of growth; explain differences across countries and to forecast changes over the next decade.

The Age of Productivity
The Age of Productivity

Author: Inter-American Development Bank

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2010-04-12

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 0230107613

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Age of Productivity offers a look at how the low productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean is preventing the region from catching up with the developed world. The authors look beyond the traditional macro explanations and dig all the way down to the industry and firm level to uncover the causes.