World of Work Report 2013 - International Labour Organization

How to shift to
a more equitable
and job-friendly
economic path
Main findings
● This Chapter shows how an approach that balances macroeconomic and
employment goals, while at the same time taking social impacts into account,
can help to address the challenges identified in earlier chapters. Moving towards
such an approach requires attention to be paid to a number of policy areas,
including macroeconomic, labour market and social protection policies. This
Chapter highlights a wide range of recent initiatives in these areas.
● First, a job-centred approach will require the fi scal and structural policies of
countries to be addressed, including the pace of fi scal consolidation measures
and the still unresolved fi nancial sector imbalances (Chapter 4). Establishing a
balance between employment and other macroeconomic objectives will be necessary
in order to achieve an inclusive recovery. This Chapter discusses recent
experiences in Asia, Latin America and selected advanced economies that have
made an effort to achieve this kind of rebalancing.
● Second, well-designed labour market and social protection policies can serve
both to realize social goals and to contribute to aggregate demand. These policy
areas have seen important innovation and experimentation in recent years and
provide lessons that would reward wider study.
● Third, there is a need to build a stronger consensus on job creation and sustainable
growth and thus to overcome barriers to such a policy shift where it is
needed. These barriers include: a failure to recognize the fact that employment
and social issues ought to be put near the top of the reform agenda; distributional
issues; entrenched beliefs that government intervention will negatively
affect competitiveness and economic growth; and insuffi cient international
coordination, which is especially important in areas such as taxation and at
times of weak global aggregate demand.
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