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Contributions from
the Column
InWEnt Forum
Renewables in China
Work needed
05/2006 |
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[ Development policy ]
Work needed
Work gets no mention in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, without more jobs tuned to the needs of the future, all other goals stand on shaky foundations. Paid employment generates tax revenues and social security contributions. Therefore, jobs are vital for enabling developing countries to meet the long-term costs of education and health from their own resources.
[ By Norbert Glaser ]
High unemployment and under-employment make job creation a constant challenge in many parts of the world. In 2005, as in previous years, employment and wages lagged behind economic growth and productivity. The evidence is contained in a recent report by the International Labour Organization. According to its authors, half the world’s 2.8 billion workforce earns less than is needed to rise above the poverty line of two dollars a day for each family member. That is exactly the same number as ten years ago. 520 million people feed themselves and their families on less than one dollar.
Officially registered unemployment is only the tip of an iceberg. The poor cannot afford to be idle. Many work under appalling conditions rather than do without any income at all. But the informal jobs, that are newly being created, often fall well short of what the ILO calls “decent work”. As the ILO points out, informal employment has always existed. But in the past it was the exception, not the rule in the majority of countries. So the ILO wants to see not only the creation of as many new jobs as possible but also more attention paid to the quality of those jobs
as well as to the quality of jobs that already exist.
Employment plays at best a secondary role in current development discourse. However, ILO expert Rolph Van der Hoeven says: “Jobs will only be created if national economic policy is geared to strategies which promote development and reduce poverty. What we find at present is the opposite. Many politicians have far too much faith in the Doha Round reducing poverty.”
Michael Hofmann of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) would also like to see the creation of decent work get more attention. “We need to do more than in the past to create new jobs,” he told a conference organised by InWEnt in cooperation with the ILO and German United Nations Association (DGVN) in Berlin recently. There was no other way, he added, to secure a sustainable reduction in poverty. “Many efforts aimed at achieving the MDGs focus too much on transfer payments.” Hofmann believes that pro-poor economic growth is not enough in itself: “We need employment-oriented concepts. It has become far harder to create long-term jobs.”
Without such jobs, however, poverty will hardly be halved by 2015. The ILO reckons that attaining that UN goal would necessitate the creation of at least a billion new jobs. It is not clear how that could be achieved. No one has any ready solutions. The only thing on which the experts agree is that investment in the poor – in terms of education and training, for instance – is imperative.
In search of a new consensus
With the decline of the Keynesian paradigm of managing economic cycles, interest in active employment policy has waned. A new consensus needs to be forged. Van der Hoeven sees good chances of the international community assuming joint responsibility to that end: “In recent years, the debate on a development policy geared to human needs has steadily gained ground.” But in the global fora on world economic activity, he adds, there is only minimal consensus on welfare state issues at present.
Van der Hoeven wants to see attention focused on the inter-connections between employment, globalisation, work and income to be moved to the centre of the debate. “We need to focus less on poverty reduction and more on employment policy,” he says. “That is vital for long-term success. Labour is the poor’s most important asset. It needs to be harnessed more effectively and made more productive.”
Michael von Hauff of Kaiserslautern University of Technology argues along similar lines. “Wherever we create jobs,” he says, “we reduce poverty and hunger”. He also believes that coupling new jobs with technological innovation kills two birds with one stone: “That way, we reduce environmental impacts and increase affluence.”
According to Hauff, the relationship between employment and environmental protection is increasingly important. Promoting renewable energies in Germany, he says, has created 30,000 jobs. In the developing world, awareness of that potential is spreading only slowly. Yet many useful jobs could be created in the renewable energy sector. Hauff advises developing countries not to focus only on the cost of environmental protection but also to consider its positive impacts.
Employment, confirms Doris Hertrampf of the German Foreign Office, is “the missing link in the poverty-reduction debate”. The “UN Report on the World Social Situation 2005” clearly indicated the connection, she says. In her view, the question that needs to be addressed first of all is: “Doesn’t a globalised world need a globalised social security system?” Jobs should also be at the heart of national government action. “Decent work for all needs to become a global objective,” Hertrampf says. In countries where 80 % of the workforce is employed in the informal sector, global economic growth makes little difference to people’s lives. “We need a social policy that empowers people to improve their economic lot. Otherwise, they will stay caught in the poverty trap.”
Experts believe growth alone will not be enough to create the jobs needed. China’s economy, for example, is growing faster than any other in the world, yet many Chinese are not benefiting. “We need decent employment for all the people who now work in agriculture and who will find it increasingly difficult to survive in that sector in the years ahead,” says Erfried Adam, a labour market expert with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. What is needed, he says, are jobs in other areas of the economy. And he feels one thing is certain: “Those people cannot all be accommodated in the services sector”. At present, 40 % of the global workforce is employed in agriculture.
In recent years, international interest in employment issues has grown. The assembled heads of government at the UN summit in September 2005, for example, told the world: “We strongly support fair globalisation and resolve to make the goals of full and productive employment and decent work for all (...) a central objective of our relevant national and international policies as well as our national development strategies, including poverty reduction strategies, as part of our efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.” However, crucially important international organisations like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank need to be brought on board. In the past, they have pretty much ignored employment matters.
The years 1997 to 2006 are officially known as the “First United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty”. So far, though, the only signs of progress are to be seen in some Asian countries. In every other part of the world, poverty has increased in absolute terms since 1990. In the present draft report on the decade, the UN urges countries “to adopt full, productive and decent employment as a central objective of national and international macroeconomic policies that is fully integrated into poverty reduction strategies”. It also encourages countries to “set time-bound goals and targets for expanding employment and reducing unemployment.”
Internet:
UN Report on the World Social Situation
(official title:
World Economic and Social Survey/WESS) at:
www.un.org/esa/policy/wess/
First United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty
(1997-2006)
www.un.org/esa/socdev/poverty/poverty.htm
Norbert Glaser
is a member of the editing team at D+C
Development and
Cooperation / E+Z Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit.
euz.editor@fsd.de
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