Youth Employment Programs - Independent Evaluation Group

to Finance business line, over a six-year period between 2006 and 2011,approximately $343 million was spent on about 444 projects in SME banking,microfinance, and financial infrastructure (such as credit bureaus). Inaddition, the business line supports women entrepreneurs through the GenderEntrepreneurship Market (GEM) Women Business initiative, which works withgroups of businesswomen both to build their capacity for presenting businessplans to client banks and to assess their banking needs.IEG also recognizes that improving access to infrastructure has economywidepositive effects on job creation, but the predominant effects tend to beindirect. The impacts from infrastructure investments will be analyzed in aforthcoming IEG evaluation.Investment Projects and Job CreationIFC clients provided 2.4 million direct jobs in 2010. Since FY05, IFC has beencollecting employment data on its investment clients. Based on the internalDevelopment Outcome Tracking System (DOTS), IFC clients in 2010 provided2.4 million direct jobs, and the net job creation between 2009 and 2010 wasapproximately 70,000 jobs. It is difficult to assess the adequacy of these jobcreation figures, as there are no set benchmarks. Further, these figures donot include jobs created indirectly through IFC interventions. Currently, IFCis working on a study aimed at understanding the job creation impacts of IFCinvestments and advisory projects and private sector activities more broadly.IFC’s direct job creation was highest in the Latin America Region, whereas thedirect jobs created in MENA countries was limited. However, IEG caveats thatthe number of clients that provide jobs data in MENA countries are limited, sothe job creation is not presented at the country level, and the data presenteddoes not include jobs created indirectly. Table E.1 indicates that Brazil, China,India, and Argentina, respectively, were the countries with the highest directjob creation supported by IFC. Although IFC has identified the issue of highunemployment rates (and high youth unemployment rates) in the MENAregion in its strategies, direct employment by IFC clients in these countrieshas been limited. Indeed, direct jobs losses were higher than direct jobscreated in MENA regions.Youth are more likely to be employed in sectors such as agriculture, services,tourism, and information technology (OECD 2009; OECD 1998). Consistentwith this evidence, the jobs created by IFC clients have been primarily inthe agribusiness and forestry sector and the consumer and social servicessectors (table E.2). This suggests that IFC investments, even in the absenceof explicitly targeting youth, have likely helped improve opportunities foryouth.Advisory Services and Job CreationBetween FY06 and FY11, of the 1,555 portfolio or completed advisory servicesprojects, 159 projects had objectives and/or results indicators linked to job124 Youth Employment Programs