Thematic Approaches

This report explores how to maximize the economic value of skills in a dynamic job market. It emphasizes that a skill's worth depends heavily on how well it complements other skills, particularly those in high demand. The value of any skill is also relative to the worker's existing skillset, with the greatest value often arising from combining skills from different areas. Focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI) skills, the report finds them especially valuable due to their strong complementarity and rising demand, boosting worker wages by an average of 21%. These findings can inform polici

The Report explores the challenges of youth unemployment for people with disabilities in South Africa. The high rate of youth unemployment is highlighted, despite employers reporting unfilled vacancies. The social model of disability is used to frame the analysis, arguing societal barriers are the main obstacle. These barriers include inaccessible workplaces and a lack of accessible education, significantly disadvantaging young people with disabilities. The report acknowledges employer challenges in finding qualified candidates.

The report identfies areas of opportunity to improve insurance schemes for the self-employed in Latin America, and uses the case of gig economy workers (from interviews with platforms such as Workana, DiDi, and Beat) to identify a new category of workers that often lack social protection.

This project, represented by the eleven studies discussed in this volume, set out to explore two broad questions: What are the experiences of individual workers and sellers as they rely on platforms to earn a living? What are the opportunities improve those experiences?

This Short Note is part of a series building on the report Working Without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work. This short note is based on a survey conducted in one of the largest microwork platforms and supplemented by data scraping from the same platform. Using descriptive statistics, network analysis, constrained linear optimization, linear regressions, and case studies, the note attempts to shed light on the world of microwork, which presents a low entry barrier opportunity for low-skilled people to supplement their incomes and participate in the digital economy.

This Note is part of the Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) Knowledge Brief series that focuses on integrating a youth employment dimension and identifying opportunities in emerging sectors. Building upon S4YE’s Discussion Note on the Circular Economy, which aims to integrate the jobs agenda within the environment agenda, and the World Bank publication, "What a Waste 2.0”, this note focuses specifically on the waste sector.

Social insurance schemes, traditionally built for stable, employer-employee jobs, often do not fit the reality of gig or self-employed workers with fluctuating incomes. This S4YE short note offers key design insights for reimagining social insurance products for self-employed, low-income, and/or gig workers. inspired by the "sachet revolution."

This Short Note is part of a series building on the report Working Without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work. This note aims to provide some practical tips for practitioners like World Bank task team leaders in implementing online gig work programs to enable vulnerable populations - such as youth, women, persons with disabilities - to access online gig jobs to support their social and economic inclusion.

This Short Note is part of a series building on the report Working without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work. While local/regional platforms may not have received as much attention as global platforms, they play an important role for the local labor market and the local private sector ecosystem in many developing countries. This note addresses the following questions: What are the distinguishing features of local/regional gig online platforms, compared to global ones?

This Short Note is part of a series building on the report Working without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work. flexibility of working hours and location associated with online gig work uniquely positions it as an avenue to boost female labor force participation, especially in regions with limited local job opportunities. This short note takes a deep dive into gender-based disparities in access to these new forms of work, especially asking whether there is a gender gap in hourly rates that online gig workers ask for and earn from online tasks.