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Employment is one of the central to the ILO's mandate, and the promotion of greater employment and income opportunities for women and men is the second of the ILO's Strategic Objectives. The main ILO instruments underlying this objective are the Employment Policy Convention (ILO Convention 122, 1964) and its accompanying Recommendation.
Most countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia have left behind the economic turmoil and production decline of 2008-2010. . Their GDP levels have by and large returned to pre-crisis levels, and some countries are experiencing quite high rates of economic growth. However, this growth is being driven by a very few industries or sectors, notably natural resources, and has so far not raised employment levels significantly. The restructuring of Soviet style industries is still far from complete. The processes of transition opened national markets to global forces and fierce competition, while at the same time weakening the power of the state to regulate the economy. Low wages and labour productivity, informal employment, and poverty are still widespread phenomena in the region. The labour markets still suffer from structural mismatches between supply and demand.
Governments’ capacity to deal with these challenges is impeded by fiscal problems. Large budget cuts have crippled technical and vocational education systems and public employment services. In addition, in several countries these government functions have been decentralized and, in the process, weakened. More and more workers are moving among jobs in various sectors or regions, and large cohorts of new workers are entering the labour market. The existing institutions are not able to meet the demand for on-the-job training, retraining, and life-long learning. The problems are particularly severe for young people, who are now turning more and more to the informal sector or self-employment.
For all these reasons, employment has become a priority for governments and their social partners. The ILO’s tripartite constituents recognize the role of boosting employment in poverty reduction and sustainable economic growth. Nine of the ten countries of the region are parties to the Employment Policy Convention, 1964 (No. 122), which makes the promotion of full, productive and freely chosen employment a major goal to be pursued. In countries facing increasing cohorts of young labour market entrants, boosting youth employment in particular is viewed as a high priority. Azerbaijan and Georgia have stepped forward to become Lead Countries of the global Youth Employment Network (YEN).
ILO Moscow strives to address these challenges in the framework of the ILO’s Global Employment Agenda and our efforts to promote decent work. Our key message is that boosting employment requires a multi-disciplinary, coordinated approach that addresses both supply (improving skills and increasing employability) and demand (job creation). Thus, we are supporting the ILO constituents in:
- making employment creation a major goal in national economic and social policies;
- developing policies and programs to increase the skills and employability of national workforces; and
- promoting creation of new jobs through entrepreneurship development.
The ILO provides technical support for the development of employment promotion strategies and programmes, improvement of skill training and retraining systems, design and implementation of vocational rehabilitation and employment of disabled persons, enhanced performance of employment services, realization of targeted youth employment programs, as well as for the design and realization of entrepreneurship training and education programmes.
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