This study looks at markets across four key areas to provide a dual perspective from both youth and employers regarding sectoral opportunities and challenges, qualifying the skills gap, bridging the gap, and the impact of COVID-19 on the labor market.

This Guide aims to address the knowledge gap and strengthen young people’s knowledge and skills on climate change and how to engage in climate policy processes. It provides targeted content and activities that help learners turn their knowledge and skills into action for climate empowerment. The tools aim to support young people in accessing climate decision-making spaces and groups and to think critically about their own country’s mitigation and adaptation priorities through a rights-based lens.

This case study provides evidence from Kenya to show that online freelancing has become an interesting sector, both in terms of its growth trajectory, and in terms of worker upward mobility in the global knowledge economy. As life everywhere moves further into the digital realm, and global internet connectivity between Africa and the rest of the world grows, more and more young Africans who stream onto the labour market may find work in the world of global online freelancing.

This Circular Economy Action Plan provides a future-oriented agenda for achieving a cleaner and more competitive Europe in co-creation with economic actors, consumers, citizens and civil society organisations. It aims at accelerating the transformational change required by the European Green Deal, while building on circular economy actions implemented since 2015.

This brief aims for a better understanding of the intersection between climate resilience and youth employment and where it may be stronger geographically, which is necessary to generate better policy and adaptation options for the future of agriculture and young people.

This manual has been created as a reference for digital entrepreneurs to demonstrate the impact of digital platforms and tools in alleviating the societal challenges resulting from COVID. 

This brief examines strategies the World Bank’s ‘Digital Jobs in Nigeria’ pilot project team adopted to help vulnerable youth in conflict-affected areas to leverage employment opportunities in the digital economy. The pilot provides training for unemployed and under-employed youth in Kaduna State to pursue digital jobs, including online freelancing and digital entrepreneurship. The brief specifically highlights the team’s responses to several challenges, including: managing security threats; navigating limited ICT infrastructure; building a local tech ecosystem; adapting to restrictive socio-cultural norms, and integrating local knowledge.

This tool is designed as a practical step-by-step tool for national digital skills assessments. It can be used to determine the existing supply of a digitally skilled cohort at a national level, to assess skills demand from industry and other sectors, to identify skills gaps, and to develop policies to address future digital skills requirements. 

This article draws on data from the Online Labour Index and interviews with freelancers in the United States securing work on online platforms, to illuminate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Collaboration between IFC and Google, this report talks about the potential of Africa’s Internet economy, promising tech entrepreneurs driving innovation, and the growing tech talent across the continent. Analysis in the report finds that Africa’s Internet economy can reach $180 billion by 2025, accounting for 5.2% of the continent’s gross domestic product (GDP). By 2050, the projected potential contribution could reach $712 billion, 8.5% of the continent’s GDP.

This literature review seeks to enunciate the different understandings of the term “circular economy” and the baselines that have been used for projections on job impacts and growth. It introduces some of the targets for European countries that are championing the transformation from a linear to a circular economy. The report also outlines the current literature’s understanding of job sectors that might change in the future.

The research reviews the entrepreneurial ecosystem to assess the capacity to foster young green entrepreneurship and address social and environmental challenges. The report considers from the perspective of key stakeholders, primarily those providing business development services and experts in the field of youth and social entrepreneurship and government representatives and entrepreneurs themselves.

Humans in the Loop uses the AI annotation market to create livelihoods opportunities for conflict-affected people and communities. This report summarizes how Humans in the Loop is impacting conflict-affected communities by connecting them to digital work programs and training during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Information and communication technologies have long been predicted to spread economic opportunities to rural areas. However, the actual trend in the 21st century has been the opposite. Knowledge spillovers have fueled urbanization and pulled job-seekers into large cities, increasing the gap with rural areas. In this article, the authors argue that new assemblages of technologies and social practices, so-called ‘online labour platforms’, have recently started to counter this trend. 

This report places the notion of social inclusion in an analysis of Africa’s achievements and challenges. Its interdisciplinary approach uses evidence to bring empirical weight to issues that are often debated through advocacy and contestation. It also contributes to the priority areas of a new regional strategy for the Africa region of the World Bank by focusing on women’s empowerment, digital technology, fragility, and climate change, among others.

Through the lens of three focus areas—skills, quality of work and inclusivity—this report provides an overview of how current labour market issues apply to the circular economy transition, the opportunities that circularity presents for the labour market and the challenges that need to be overcome to achieve a future labour market that enables people and the planet to thrive.

This Jobs Solutions Note identifies practical solutions for development practitioners to proactively integrate gender inclusion in digital jobs programs. Based on curated knowledge and evidence for a specific topic and relevant to jobs, the Jobs Solutions Notes are not intended to be exhaustive; they provide key lessons, solutions and approaches synthesized from the experiences of the World Bank Group and partners. This Note draws from S4YE’s 2018 annual report, Digital Jobs for Youth: Young Women in the Digital Economy, highlighting new and emerging strategies to designing gender-inclusive digital jobs interventions for youth. The Note employs a nuanced definition of “digital jobs” to enable practitioners and policy makers to develop a range of interventions tailored to specific contexts and target groups, to improve young women’s employment outcomes from digital jobs programs.

In 2017, the JRC conducted the COLLEEM pilot survey, an initial attempt to provide quantitative evidence on platform work. This report builds on previous findings and contributes by describing the results of the second wave of COLLEEM (2018).

The Online Labour Index 2020 delivers a more detailed picture of the world of online freelancing via an interactive online visualisation updated daily. It provides easy access to downloadable open data for policymakers, labour market researchers, and the general public.

This report analyzes the digital gig economy in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia and provides policy recommendations for a long-term approach that considers the needs of platforms, gig workers, consumers, and the government authorities themselves.