The authors of this article combined data collected from various sources to build a data-driven assessment of the number of such online workers (also known as online freelancers) globally. Their headline estimate is that there are 163 million freelancer profiles registered on online labour platforms globally.

Mobile phone network coverage has increased worldwide over the past two decades. In advanced and emerging economies alike, young people are much more digitally connected than older generations. Digital technologies offer an opportunity to communicate with youth and collect data at a low-cost. Using digital methods like SMS has become more relevant to obtain timely data and information, especially with the current COVID-19 crisis. This note highlights the six steps taken by the Mexico Youth Labor Market Inclusion (MYLMI) project to design a successful short message system (SMS) outreach strategy to incorporate youth voice in their project.

This note highlights how the Mexico Youth Labor Market Inclusion (MYLMI) project used four strategies to incorporate youth voice in the design of their program. The project focuses on generating evidence on interventions that promote the labor inclusion of low-income youth into formal quality jobs in strategic productive sectors. The project is being implemented by the World Bank and the Government of Mexico in the state of San Luis Potosi.

An innovation of IFC, Vitae helps higher education institutions understand how well they’re preparing students for the workforce. It’s a data-driven approach for public and private institutions to evaluate themselves against a global benchmark of good practices. Vitae identifies employability gaps and proposes practical interventions to equip an institution to chart a path to transformation.

This report presents a first diagnostic of Africa’s gender gap in financing early-stage ventures in the digital economy (start-ups). The report’s findings indicate that since 2013, only 3 percent of total funding for Africa’s tech start-ups went to all-female founding teams, compared with 76 percent of funding for all-male teams. The report’s analysis shows that female founders are underrepresented in the sectors that attract the most financing; however, even those all-female teams that are working in sectors with high investor interest remain less likely to receive financing than all-male teams, and they receive smaller amounts if they do. Male and female entrepreneurs in the report’s sample also followed different financing paths: female founders were less likely to pitch for equity investments; conversely, they were more likely to apply for bank loans, or to prefer growth from retained earnings.

This publication draws lessons and good practices from entrepreneurship development models and incubation centres designed for the youth in Indonesia. It explores the incubation centres in the country's three public higher education institutions and an entrepreneurship training model facilitated by a Swiss–Indonesian start-up accelerator program. Recommendations focus on strengthening similar programs in other universities, such as management and resources, financial sustainability, mentorship and training, business services and facilities, graduation and post-incubation, and documentation and evaluation.

This research considers how various countries around the world are meeting the challenge of ensuring decent work for interns, and what more needs to be done to realize that objective, including the possible development of a new international labor standard on this issue.

This note provides an overview of labor markets and job outcomes in the Horn of Africa. It provides an overview of issues related to jobs in the five countries of the region, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. It first discusses labor market characteristics, notably labor force participation, unemployment and underemployment,as well as demographics of the labor force. Secondly, it compares employment patterns, focusing on the type and sector of employment. Finally, it looks at the limited information available on jobs outcomes – notably, wage levels.

This report examines the scope, potential benefits, and challenges of digital platforms in Asia and the Pacific. It proposes measures and policies to help maximize social and economic gains while alleviating adverse effects.

This technical brief shares lessons learnt and practical examples from Ecuador, Rwanda, Vietnam and Zambia on how to scale up innovations in education for implementation in different contexts and then sustain the shifts in practice, policy, and each setting structures.

The cultural sector has been severely and persistently affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, with museums particularly hard hit: the 2020 UNESCO report estimated that nearly 90%, or an estimated 85,000 institutions, had been closed for varying lengths of time. The role of museums in society is essential, as they are responsible not only for preserving heritage for future generations but also as central actors for promoting lifelong learning and equal access to culture and the dissemination of values on which humanity is based. In this particularly difficult context, UNESCO has launched a 2021 study to reassess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on museum attendance, budgets and activities in order to analyze the threats to the sector and its evolution in the next few years.  

This publication explores and examines the timely and accurate identification of NQCs, their integration into appealing and flexible curricula, and their effective implementation through new teaching and learning methods as well as relevant teacher and trainer training.

This guidance supports colleagues and partner organisations to develop and manage partnerships with young people in ways that align with the principles and steps within ‘Building Better Partnerships’, recognising that meaningful partnerships with youth-led organisations and groups may require different considerations and ways of working for our work together to flourish.

The transition to a green economy will create many new jobs around the world, including in sub-Saharan Africa. But will women share in these new jobs, and will the economic transformation help them move into higher-paid, more stable jobs that require more education and skills?  This brief presents some insights into the green job opportunities available for women in Sub-Saharan Africa and provides policy recommendations to establish appropriate and enabling policies and programmes to ensure that women get an equitable share of green jobs.

This report seeks to focus attention on the challenges that Africa’s women entrepreneurs face and identify practical solutions. The report draws on new, high-quality, household and firm-level data to present the clearest evidence to date about the barriers to growth and profitability faced by women entrepreneurs. It goes beyond looking at contextual, endowment and household restrictions in isolation, and, through deep-dive analysis, uncovers new evidence on how social norms, networks and household-level decision making contribute to business performance. It analyzes how they are linked to each other and to women’s strategic business decisions.

The European Grouping of Societies of Authors and Composers (GESAC) commissioned EY teams to produce a report on the state of the cultural and creative industries (CCIs) in Europe. What was their economic situation before the COVID-19 crisis? What impact has the crisis had on activity and employment? And what are the main priorities for the sector to protect itself from the most serious consequences, to recover growth and enhance its value in the European economy? This study follows a report of the same type, entitled Creating Growth, published in December 2014.

This report highlights the key findings and recommendations from a global online survey organized by Plan International. The survey captures the opinions and experiences of young people on climate change education and their participation in climate policy processes.

School closures during COVID-19 (coronavirus) led to an unprecedented global experiment in the delivery of remote learning. This report seeks to assess what lessons can be drawn from experiences of remote learning during COVID-19 in K-12 education, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries.

This study includes three main sections that have been organized in chronological order within this report: the first one, “What can we learn from education emergency responses in low- and middle-income countries?” analyzes the emergency education responses to the COVID-19 pandemic of over 120 governments from April until May 2020.

This report focuses on the needs of civil society, the main challenges facing the cultural sectors in the region such as artistic freedom, dialogue with governments, gender equality, cultural policies and the treatment of culture in trade agreements. Due to the vastness of the Asia-Pacific region and the time allotted for the study, not all countries and regions in AsiaPacific are represented in this report. While some challenges and needs may be recurrent in a majority of countries, most are specific to local contexts and particular histories. It is therefore important to keep in mind that the findings of this research cannot be applied to the whole region and that further cooperation will be needed to reach out to civil society organisations that have not been included in this project. Finally, the dynamic and often fragile nature of the cultural sectors requires continuous dialogue with local civil society organisations, as new challenges constantly arise. In this respect, the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot yet be known, especially considering that in most Asia-Pacific countries the fight against the Coronavirus is still ongoing.