A meaningful recovery must involve job creation

The governments and employers’ and workers’ organizations that adopted the Pact in June 2009 recognized the urgent need to reduce the risk of long-term unemployment and increased informal work, which are difficult to reverse. They agreed to put full and productive employment and decent work at the heart of the crisis response, suggesting a wide range of potential policy responses.

Some of the Pact recommendations:

• Boosting effective demand and helping maintain wage levels including via macroeconomic stimulus packages;
• Helping jobseekers by:

(i) implementing effective, properly targeted active labour market policies;

(ii) enhancing the competence and increasing resources available to public employment services so that jobseekers receive adequate support and, where they are working with private employment agencies, ensuring that quality services are provided and rights respected; and

(iii) implementing vocational and entrepreneurial skills programmes for paid and self-employment;

• Investing in workers’ skills development, skills upgrading and re-skilling to improve employability, in particular for those having lost or at risk of losing their job and vulnerable groups;
• Limiting or avoiding job losses and supporting enterprises in retaining their workforce through well-designed schemes implemented through social dialogue and collective bargaining. These could include work-sharing and partial unemployment benefits;
• Supporting job creation across sectors of the economy, recognizing the multiplier effect of targeted efforts;
• Recognizing the contribution of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and micro-enterprises to job creation, and promoting measures, including access to affordable credit, that would ensure a favourable environment for their development;
• Recognizing that cooperatives provide jobs in our communities from very small businesses to large multinationals and tailoring support for them according to their needs;
• Using public employment guarantee schemes for temporary employment, emergency public works programmes and other direct job creation schemes which are well targeted, and include the informal economy;
• Implementing a supportive regulatory environment conducive to job creation through sustainable enterprise creation and development; and
• Increasing investment in infrastructure, research and development, public services and “green” production and services as important tools for creating jobs and stimulating sustained economic activity.