Employment-intensive investment

Around the world, millions of people lack infrastructure to access basic services such as safe drinking water, healthcare, and education. Enhancing infrastructure and maintaining it can improve living standards and have a direct impact on the quality of people’s lives. Productive community infrastructure can also contribute to reducing rural and urban poverty and have the potential of offering better economic and social benefits.

Employment-intensive investments link infrastructure development with employment creation, poverty reduction and local economic and social development. In using local labour and resources, they create much needed employment and income, reduce costs, save foreign currency, and support local industry while increasing the capacity of local institutions.

Employment-intensive investment activities embed cross-cutting areas that reflect core ILO values such as promoting gender equality, supporting social inclusion and reaching vulnerable groups, improving working conditions, combating climate change and protecting the environment, and fostering social dialogue. 

The Employment-Intensive Investment Programme (EIIP) leads the ILO's employment-intensive investment activities. With over 50 years of experience in more than 70 countries, EIIP has built a unique portfolio of productive employment creation for economic development, social protection, and natural resource management.

Read the EIIP programme document: Creating jobs through public investment

Watch the full-length video: Creating jobs through public investment: ILO’s Employment Intensive Investment Programme (11 min)

Find out more: EIIP – A Strategic Instrument for Delivering Decent Work through National Ownership

The biennial Regional Seminars for Labour-based Practitioners bring together global stakeholders to discuss employment-intensive investments and local-level planning. These events facilitate knowledge exchange, mutual learning, networking, and South-South cooperation, focusing on labour-based technologies and pro-employment approaches.

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