IFI Symposium on Measuring and Assessing Quality of Employment

As quantifying employment generation from investment operations gains momentum, understanding not only the quantity of jobs created but their quality as well has become a priority. To advance this agenda, the ILO is pleased to announce the next ILO Symposium for Development Finance Institutions on “Measuring and Assessing the Quality of Employment,” taking place on 1–2 December 2025 at the ILO Headquarters in Geneva (in person only).

Since 2020, the ILO has hosted an annual symposium bringing together international financial institutions (IFIs), development finance institutions (DFIs), and multilateral development banks (MDBs) to strengthen collaboration on measuring employment impacts. The 2025 edition will focus on employment quality, exploring how to capture the multidimensional aspects of decent work in investment-related operations.

The 1.5-day in-person event will feature expert discussions on practical indicators such as wage, informality, working hours, and occupational safety, and reflect on methodological approaches for both measuring employment quality based on existing data and assessing employment quality impacts either through prospective analysis or ex-post counterfactual methods. Participants will include representatives from IFIs, MDBs and DFIs, including the World Bank, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, and Islamic Development Bank, as well as FMO, KfW and Proparco among others. ILO will facilitate and provide significant technical inputs as well.

The event is open for all practitioners working in IFIs, or other development banks, who are keen on advancing methodology and exchanging experiences on the best practices and challenges to evaluate the quality of employment within their insitutions’ investments.