This report highlights the importance of emotional resilience to cope with the rapidly changing nature of work. The report highlights six strategies to cultivate emotional resilience among youth: (i) using a hybrid approach to enhance both coping and thriving abilities in schools; (ii) restoring refugees’ self-agency & ‘making meaning’ mindset; (iii) incorporating resilience-building strategies in traditional interventions that support entrepreneurs; (iv) adopting low cost, self-directed, digital interventions to support youth at scale in difficult times; (v) adopting mindfulness to release stress and increase self-awareness when engaged in fast learning and high-pressure environments; and (vi) designing work readiness training journeys that integrate both technical and socio-emotional skills.

Short-term education and skills training programs are a popular way to meet the needs of unemployed, out-of-school youth by providing them with an opportunity to quickly acquire qualifications and skills that can lead to productive employment. This new paper reviews the global evidence to identify which programs are most effective at delivering results. Based on the findings, recommendations are offered for the future design of these training programs.

The main objective of this document is to provide guidance on how to apply a “Blue Economy lens” to Bank operations. To this end, it aims to: 1. Ensure that the World Bank’s operations around oceanic activities are developed with a view to improving the necessary integration between different economic sectors, both on land and at sea, and avoiding unnecessary impacts on ocean health. 2. Identify means to scale up Blue Economy activities, including through new sources of innovative blue finance. To achieve these goals, two related streams of work are identified: one focused on promoting an integrated approach to the sustainable development of oceanic sectors, and the other focused on increasing blue financing.

This report presents the findings from the second phase of the Research for Results (R4R) program. The R4R’s primary objective is to generate quantitative evidence on student and teacher performance, school environment and management, and qualitative evidence related to vulnerable youth at risk of dropping out. This evidence-based analysis is supported by policy recommendations and featured in the new government's five-year general education strategy (2021-2025).

This Cedefop CrowdLearn study undertakes a comparative analysis of skill development and workplace learning practices among two major types of online platform work: online freelancing and microwork. It combines information on microworkers drawn from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform with the original CrowdLearn sample of online freelancers surveyed from three major online labour platforms (Fiverr, Upwork, PeoplePerHour). 

The COVID-19 pandemic has seriously disrupted the skilling, upskilling and reskilling of employees, apprentices and interns in all types of enterprises and organisations around the world. To assess the impact of the pandemic, 10 development partners together undertook a global online survey of enterprises from 27 April to 5 June 2020. This report presents the findings from a global survey of enterprises.

This white paper sets out reforms to further education, recognising that the UK economy is changing rapidly. The pandemic, Brexit, climate change, the expected growth of jobs requiring STEM education or training had collectively snowballed into a skills shortage in recent years – young people did not have the knowledge, skills and behaviours needed in the current and future economy.

The report provides an overview of social protection instruments for different groups in informal economy and proposes innovative instruments to encourage the “missed middle” of social protection to save and build resilience to future shocks.

This report provides an understanding of Sudan's country context and the specific challenges affecting youth employment. The study also identifies key opportunities and solutions to increase youth employment and assesses how the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE), launched in 2019 by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, can play a role in supporting them.

The production and distribution of film and audiovisual works is one of the most dynamic growth sectors in the world. Thanks to digital technologies, production has been growing rapidly in Africa in recent years. The case of "Nollywood", with about 2,500 films made each year, is emblematic in this respect. It has enabled the emergence of a local industry of production and distribution with its own economic model. Yet across most of the continent, the economic potential of the film and audiovisual sectors remains largely untapped. It is estimated that these sectors account for US$5 billion in revenues in Africa and employ 5 million people.For the first time, a complete mapping of the film and audiovisual industry in 54 States of the African continent is available, including quantitative and qualitative data and an analysis of their strengths and weaknesses at the continental and regional levels.The report proposes strategic recommendations for the development of the film and audiovisual sectors in Africa and invites policymakers, professional organizations, firms, filmmakers and artists to implement them in a concerted manner.

This brief explores how adopting circular models can create more job opportunities, especially in the services sector. The note shows that the shift to the circular economy has potential for job creation- activities like waste collection, recycling, repair, and remanufacturing are more labour-intensive and could be important segues to job creation. From a skills perspective, the adoption of circular approaches brings to light the importance of skilling, upskilling and digital skill acquisition. In addition, circular jobs will likely demand multidisciplinary and deep technical/industry skills.

This report investigates how Norwegian aid may contribute to reducing emissions while fighting poverty. Three areas where Norway already has a strong record are clean energy, energy transition, nature-based solutions, and sustainable food systems. In addition to these, three areas where there is potential for cooperation are green taxes, the circular economy and urbanization, and green urban development. 

The creative sector is an important source of growth in the global economy, and digital creative trade has increased sharply in recent years and particularly in the context of COVID-19. Digital content is replacing physical goods in the sector, for example, in music, books and gaming. Digital aggregators like Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Spotify, TikTok and YouTube have fuelled rapid growth and diversified earnings towards streaming, ad-supported income and data monetization. Copyright revenues are also rising, and the share of digital collections is the fastest growth segment. Participation in the sector by developing countries appears to be increasing, although data availability is poor. To reap the potential benefits of the digital creative economy, developing countries should support a shift from the typical low value-added, stand-alone practitioner industry model to a strategic collaborative approach that facilitates higher levels of creative and digital entrepreneurship. This will require a stronger legal and institutional framework to improve leverage and monetize copyright, financial support for the commercialization of creative activities, government involvement in business support services (e.g. training, incubators, innovation labs, market incubators, cluster development and market development programmes), the creation of enabling institutions to represent the interests of creative workers and firms, and the harmonization of government  policies towards the sector. 

This note seeks to look back at the development and implementation process of the European Credit System for Vocational Education and Training (ECVET). It takes take stock of its main achievements and how they are taken forward in the 2020 Council Recommendation on vocational education and training (VET) for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience and paves the way for future EU initiatives.

This report explores the labor market outcomes and returns of SCPs, examines their providers, and identifies the practices adopted by the best programs. Relying on unique data that includes a novel survey of short-cycle programs (SCPs) directors in five LAC countries, it finds that while SCPs generate, on average, good labor market outcomes, they vary greatly in quality. Drawing on these findings, this report discusses how to create an environment where good programs are offered and students have the interest and means to attend them.

Over the longer term, the creative economy is likely to be a key driver of economic growth as governments around the world look to rebuild their economies in the wake of the downturn associated with Covid-19. It is reasonable to expect that the sector will return to its long-term trend of growing faster than the wider economy as, for example, advertising is likely to recover strongly with the wider economy and other sources of income have been more resilient. The fundamental driver of creative economy growth remains that when consumers have more to spend, and have increasingly sated their demand for other goods and services, they are more likely to spend that additional income on outputs of the creative economy. The importance of the creative economy for overall economic performance is therefore likely to grow. This means its importance for policymaking is also likely to continue to grow, with countries more or less well-positioned to take advantage of that underlying growth in global demand. While this study focuses on developed economies, middle-income countries are likely to show even stronger growth to the extent their overall national income grows faster.

This report highlights how rapid and widespread digitalization has changed the nature of work. The report's findings stress the importance and urgency of addressing the digital skills gap and highlight that digital and social inequalities also affect the available opportunities to develop digital skills.

The growth of digital labour platforms is presenting opportunities and challenges for workers and businesses and a need for international policy dialogue. This report examines: the features of platform business model, what motivates workers to perform task on platforms and policy recommendations.

Making smart decisions today could set up the world’s young people for success in the green jobs of tomorrow. But shaping those decisions can be tricky as many of those future jobs don’t yet exist. The United Nations Environment Programme has developed GEO-6 for Youth - a digital guide on sustainable career choices and the skills required to thrive in green industries. This article from the World Economic Forum discusses six key skill categories that can help youth build a successful career in the future.