The employment situation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Recovery of employment: towards a sustainable model

The adverse effects on Latin America and the Caribbean of the global economic and financial crisis, the worst since the 1930s, have been considerably less than was once feared. Although a run of growth was cut short in 2009 and regional output shrank by 1.9%, the impact of the crisis was limited by the application of countercyclical fiscal and monetary policies by many of the region’s governments. The recovery in the economies, particularly in South America, has gone hand-in-hand with the rapid resurgence of the emerging economies of Asia, with all the favourable consequences this has had for global trade. A similar pattern may be observed regarding the impact of the crisis on labour markets in Latin America and the Caribbean. Although millions of people lost their jobs or had to trade down to lower-quality work, levels of employment (including formal employment) fell by less than originally foreseen. At the same time, real wages rose slightly in a context of falling inflation. The labour market thus stabilized domestic demand, and this contributed to the recovery that began in many countries in late 2009. Improved international trade and financing conditions, and the pick-up in domestic demand driven by macroeconomic policies, have led different commentators to estimate growth in the region’s economy at some 6% in 2010. As detailed in the first part of this edition of the Bulletin, the upturn has been manifested at the regional level by the creation of formal employment, a rise in the employment rate, a decline in joblessness and a moderate increase in real wages. Specifically, it is estimatedthat the regional unemployment rate will have dropped by 0.6 percentage points, from 8.1% in 2009 to 7.5% in 2010. The performance of different countries and subregions has been very uneven, however. On the one hand, there is Brazil, where high economic growth has been accompanied by vigorous creation of formal jobs and the unemployment rate has dropped to levels not seen in a long time. Other countries in South America have benefited from strong demand for natural resources from the Asian countries. Combined with higher domestic demand, this has raised their economic growth rates and had a positive impact on employment indicators. On the other hand, the recovery is still very weak in certain countries and subregions, particularly in the Caribbean, with employment indicators continuing to worsen.Thus, the recovery in the region’s economy in 2010 may be characterized as dynamic but uneven. Growth estimates for 2011 are less favourable. The risks associated with the imbalances in the world economy and the withdrawal of countercyclical fiscal packages are likely to cause the region to grow more slowly in 2011. Accordingly, a small further reduction of between 0.2 and 0.4 percentage points in the unemployment rate is projected for 2011. However, these indicators of recovery do not guarantee growth with decent work in the long term. To bolster the improvement in labour market indicators and generate more productive employment and decent work, the region’s countries need to strengthen their macroeconomic policies, improve regional and global policy coordination, identify and remove bottlenecks in the labour market itself and enhance instruments designed to promote greater equality. Like the rest of the world, the Latin American and Caribbean region is also confronted with the challenge of transforming the way it produces so that its economies can develop along tracks that are sustainable in the long term. Climate change and the consequent challenge of developing and strengthening low-carbon production and consumption patterns will also affect the way people work. A great challenge ahead is to create green jobs that combine decent work with environmentally sustainable production patterns. From this perspective, the second part of this Bulletin discusses the green jobs approach, offering some information on the challenges and opportunities involved in moving towards a sustainable economy in the region and presenting a set of options for addressing environmental issues and the repercussions of climate change in the world of work. Although the debate about the green jobs concept is fairly new in the region, examples already exist and a number of countries have moved ahead with the application of policies and programmes in this area. Costa Rica has formulated a National Climate Change Strategy, for example, whose foremost achievements include professional training in natural-resource management. In Brazil, fuel production from biomass has increased and social housing with solar panelling is being built. A number of other countries in the region are making progress in areas such as ecotourism, sustainable agriculture and infrastructure for climate change adaptation, and in formalizing the work of people who recycle household waste. The shift towards a more environmentally sustainable economy may cause jobs to be destroyed in some economic sectors and created in others. The working world will inevitably undergo major changes. If the issue is approached by way of social dialogue and appropriate public policies, there is a chance to use this shift to create more decent jobs, thereby contributing to growth in the economy, the construction of higher levels of equality and protection for the environment.

The employment situation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Crisis, stabilization and reactivation: performance of the labour market in 2009

Following a five-year period during which economic and social performance in Latin America and the Caribbean surpassed anything seen in recent decades, the global economic and financial crisis not only hurt macroeconomic variables but also impacted heavily on labour markets in the region’s countries. Between 2003 and 2008 employment rates had risen considerably, especially in the formal sector, but the crisis spelled a reversal of this trend. Nevertheless, the region was better prepared than it had been in previous crises, since it had achieved a sound fiscal footing, a good level of international reserves and low rates of inflation. This meant that the authorities had the space to implement countercyclical policies on both fiscal and monetary levels. Be this as it may, faced with the worst global crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, these measures could only attenuate the impact on the region’s economies —they could not prevent it altogether. Furthermore, the crisis struck with notable differences among subregions and countries depending on the nature of their trade integration, and not all the countries had the fiscal space to implement vigorous countercyclical policies. As discussed in this third ECLAC/ILO bulletin, the crisis did less damage to the region’s labour markets than had been feared at the beginning of last year, thanks to the implementation of public policies geared towards employment, as reviewed in the two previous bulletins. This bulletin offers an additional analysis from the perspective of gender equality. Moreover, some countries in the region, notably Brazil, managed to rapidly stabilize and revive economic growth, with positive effects on labour variables. The fact remains, however, that millions in Latin America and the Caribbean lost their jobs or were obliged to accept more poorly paid employment in more precarious conditions. The macroeconomic data indicate that recovery is under way and is stronger and occurring more rapidly than foreseen one year ago. In fact, regional growth in 2010 may well exceed the 4.1% forecast at the end of 2009. Consequently, although the unemployment rate may be expected to record a modest drop, it may not return to pre-crisis levels. The upturn is taking many different forms in the countries of the region. In some, especially in South America, recovery has benefited from the buoyancy of the Asian economies, whose demand for natural resources has driven large increases in exports, in terms of both volume and price. Countries whose economies are closely tied to the United States economy are benefiting from the recovery there, albeit more slowly and with a certain lag. Conversely, some countries are still suffering from major disequilibria, which are hampering their economic reactivation. Lastly, Chile and Haiti were both victims of devastating earthquakes early in the year and are therefore facing additional challenges associated with reconstruction, on top of their efforts to sustain an economic upturn. Despite the relatively favourable outlook for regional growth in 2010, great uncertainty still surrounds the global economy’s recovery, which affects the region’s economic prospects over the longer term. The weakness of the recovery in some regions and the doubts about its sustainability in others, as well as shocks that have occurred in international financial markets, are warning signs which authorities need to monitor continuously because of the region’s close integration with the global economy. In addition, a return to growth does not directly or automatically mean higher employment rates —still less decent working conditions. Although some labour indicators have performed reasonably favourably since the end of last year, the countries still face daunting challenges in improving the labour market integration of millions in Latin America and the Caribbean who are not seeing the fruits of renewed growth. This is why it is important to learn the lessons arising from the policies implemented during the crisis to offset its impact on labour markets. With this third joint bulletin, ECLAC and ILO continue to pursue their objective of affording the region the information and analyses needed to face these challenges, as regards both trends in the region’s labour markets and the corresponding policy options.

Fiscal policy contradiction: a perspective on Brazil and Mexico

The aim of this paper is to discuss the quality of fiscal policy in Brazil and Mexico and investigate whether fiscal policy influence is favorable to reduce the unemployment rate. Public spending, which has a positive effect on the level of employment when results in additional aggregate demand, may cause a negative effect on employment, if its financing depends on persistent high interest rates. Brazil and Mexico have engaged in a long effort to control public spending and to reduce the public deficit to zero. Does this policy bring a positive result to the economic activity no matter how actual public deficit has been financed? We select variables related to public budget as public sector borrowing requirements, taxes, public debt and others to form a data base. The fiscal institutional arrangement and the data allow us to evaluate the fiscal policy as a who leand to discuss the importance of credibility and reputation of the government.

Essays in policy evaluation

This dissertation consists of three empirical studies that aim at providing new evidence in the field of public policy evaluation. In particular, the first two chapters focus on the effects of the European cohesion policy, while the third chapter assesses the effectiveness of Italian labour market incentives in reducing long-term unemployment. The first study analyses the effect of EU funds on life satisfaction across European regions , under the assumption that projects financed by structural funds in the fields of employment, education, health and environment may affect the overall quality of life in recipient regions. Using regional data from the European Social Survey in 2002-2006, it resorts to a regression discontinuity design, where the discontinuity is provided by the institutional framework of the policy. The second study aims at estimating the impact of large transfers from a centralized authority to a local administration on the incidence of white collar crimes. It merges a unique dataset on crimes committed in Italian municipalities between 2007 and 2011 with information on the disbursement of EU structural funds in 2007-2013 programming period, employing an instrumental variable estimation strategy that exploits the variation in the electoral cycle at local level. The third study analyses the impact of an Italian labour market policy that allowed firms to cut their labour costs on open-ended job contracts when hiring long-term unemployed workers. It takes advantage of a unique dataset that draws information from the unemployment lists in Veneto region and it resorts to a regression discontinuity approach to estimate the effect of the policy on the job finding rate of long-term unemployed workers.

EPA's Council for Regulatory Environmental Modeling : a case study of science policy implementation

As environmental problems became more complex, policy and regulatory decisions become far more difficult to make. The use of science has become an important practice in the decision making process of many federal agencies. Many different types of scientific information are used to make decisions within the EPA, with computer models becoming especially important. Environmental models are used throughout the EPA in a variety of contexts and their predictive capacity has become highly valued in decision making. The main focus of this research is to examine the EPA’s Council for Regulatory Modeling (CREM) as a case study in addressing science issues, particularly models, in government agencies. Specifically, the goal was to answer the following questions: What is the history of the CREM and how can this information shed light on the process of science policy implementation? What were the goals of implementing the CREM? Were these goals reached and how have they changed? What have been the impediments that the CREM has faced and why did these impediments occur? The three main sources of information for this research came from observations during summer employment with the CREM, document review and supplemental interviews with CREM participants and other members of the modeling community. Examining a history of modeling at the EPA, as well as a history of the CREM, provides insight into the many challenges that are faced when implementing science policy and science policy programs. After examining the many impediments that the CREM has faced in implementing modeling policies, it was clear that the impediments fall into two separate categories, classic and paradoxical. The classic impediments include the more standard impediments to science policy implementation that might be found in any regulatory environment, such as lack of resources and changes in administration. Paradoxical impediments are cyclical in nature, with no clear solution, such as balancing top-down versus bottom-up initiatives and coping with differing perceptions. These impediments, when not properly addressed, severely hinder the ability for organizations to successfully implement science policy.

Physics and Science Policy Implications of Reduction of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Arsenal

Maintaining the readiness U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile is a fundamental pillar of American defense policy. The biggest issue facing the national laboratories that are charged with this mission is replenishing the highly skilled and specialized manpower that is necessary for this task. This lecture presents both physics and science policy questions that must be answered. It also presents employment opportunities for young scientists and engineers.

Citizenship and Mental Health Policy in Europe

The problems confronted by people who experience mental disorders are often conceptualised in terms of health and illness. However, these problems extend far beyond the healthcare system, into all areas of human life. Having a psychiatric diagnosis may have a negative impact on every aspect of the individual’s life, leading to the deprivation or limitation of rights in relation to housing, employment, and family life. In this article, some of these problems are discussed within the theoretical framework of debates on citizenship and on human rights. As the context is Europe, reference is made to the recent policy initiatives with the EU, to national and European level consumer organisations and to cases brought before the European Court of Human Rights.

Policy Contexts of Social Work in Britain: the wider implications of 'New' Labour and the 'New Legal Regime'

Several commentators have expressed disappointment with New Labour's apparent adherence to the policy frameworks of the previous Conservative administrations. The employment orientation of its welfare programmes, the contradictory nature of the social exclusion initiatives, and the continuing obsession with public sector marketisation, inspections, audits, standards and so on, have all come under critical scrutiny (c.f., Blyth 2001; Jordan 2001; Orme 2001). This paper suggests that in order to understand the socio-economic and political contexts affecting social work we need to examine the relationship between New Labour's modernisation project and its insertion within an architecture of global governance. In particular, membership of the European Union (EU), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organisation (WTO) set the parameters for domestic policy in important ways. Whilst much has been written about the economic dimensions of 'globalisation' in relation to social work rather less has been noted about the ways in which domestic policy agenda are driven by multilateral governance objectives. This policy dimension is important in trying to respond to various changes affecting social work as a professional activity. What is possible, what is encouraged, how things might be done, is tightly bounded by the policy frameworks governing practice and affected by those governing the lives of service users. It is unhelpful to see policy formulation in purely national terms as the UK is inserted into a network governance structure, a regulatory framework where decisions are made by many countries and organisations and agencies. Together, they are producing a 'new legal regime', characterised by a marked neo-liberal policy agenda. This paper aims to demonstrate the relationship of New Labour's modernisation programme to these new forms of legality by examining two main policy areas and the welfare implications they are enmeshed in. The first is privatisation, and the second is social policy in the European Union. Examining these areas allows a demonstration of how much of the New Labour programme can be understood as a local implementation of a transnational strategy, how parts of that strategy produce much of the social exclusion it purports to address, and how social welfare, and particularly social work, are noticeable by their absence within policy discourses of the strategy. The paper details how the privatisation programme is considered to be a crucial vehicle for the further development of a transnational political-economy, where capital accumulation has been redefined as 'welfare'. In this development, frameworks, codes and standards are central, and the final section of the paper examines how the modernisation strategy of the European Union depends upon social policy marked by an employment orientation and risk rationality, aimed at reconfiguring citizen identities.The strategy is governed through an 'open mode of coordination', in which codes, standards, benchmarks and so on play an important role. The paper considers the modernisation strategy and new legality within which it is embedded as dependent upon social policy as a technology of liberal governance, one demonstrating a new rationality in comparison to that governing post-Second World War welfare, and which aims to reconfigure institutional infrastructure and citizen identity.

Resisting Postmodernity: Swedish social policy in the 1990s

The purpose of this paper is to introduce ideas that have emerged during the course of writing a book on Swedish welfare in the 1990s. The book is the result of many years of writing about two subjects: Swedish drug policy and the Swedish welfare state. The one very specialised, the other, more general. I first became interested in Swedish drug policy on a research visit to Örebro Län in 1986. A social worker showed me a copy of the county's drug policy programme and explained the significance of the 'restrictive line'. I have spent the years since that visit, trying to understand and explain the Swedish goal of a drug-free society (Gould 1988, 1994, 1996b). I only began to write about the welfare state in Sweden in the early 1990s, just as things were beginning to go wrong for the economy (Gould 1993a, 1993b, 1996a, 1999). For the last few years I have intended to write a book on the events covered by the period 1991-1998 - the years of a Bourgeois and a Social Democratic Government -which would bring the two halves of my work together. Material for this study has been accumulated over many years. A number of research visits have been made; large numbers of academics, politicians, civil servants, journalists, unemployed people, social workers and their clients have been interviewed; and extensive use has been made of academic, administrative and public libraries. Since September 1991 I have systematically collected articles from Dagens Nyheter about social services, social insurance, health care, employment, social issues and problems, the economy and politics. The journal Riksdag och Departement (Parliament and Ministry), which summarises a wide range of public documents, has been invaluable. Friends and informal contacts have also given me insights into the Swedish way of life. The new book is based upon all of these experiences. This paper will begin with a brief account of major global social and economic changes that have occurred in the last twenty years. This is intended to provide a background to the more recent changes that have occurred in Swedish society in the last decade. It will be suggested that the changes in Sweden, particularly in the field of welfare, have been less severe than elsewhere and that this is due to political, institutional and cultural resistance. The paper will conclude by arguing that Sweden, as an exemplar of an Apollonian modern society, has had much to fear from the Dionysian characteristics of postmodernity.

The Active Subjects of Welfare Reform: a Street-Level Comparison of Employment Services in Australia and Denmark

This paper explores the similarities and differences between Denmark and Australia in adopting welfare reform activation measures in the field of employment services. In Australia and Denmark the discourse of welfare reform centres the 'activation' of citizens through 'mutual obligation' type requirements. Through various forms of case management, unemployed individuals are encouraged to act upon themselves in creating the right set of ethical dispositions congruent with 'active citizenship'. At the same time any resistance to heightened conditionality on the part of the unemployed person is dealt with through a range of coercive and disciplinary techniques. A comparative case study between these two countries allows us to consider how similar ideas, discourse and principles are shaping policy implementation in countries that have very different welfare state trajectories and institutional arrangements for the delivery of social welfare generally and employment services specifically. And in research terms, a comparison between a Nordic welfare state and an Anglo-Saxon welfare state provides an opportunity to critically examine the utility of 'welfare regime' type analyses and the neo-liberal convergence thesis in comparative welfare research. On the basis of empirical analysis, the article concludes that a single focus on abstract typologies or political ideologies is not very helpful in getting the measure of welfare reform (or any other major policy development for that matter). At the 'street-level' of policy practice there is considerably more ambiguity, incoherence and contradiction than is suggested by linear accounts of welfare reform.

Constellations of Disadvantage and Policy Dilemmas in Youth Transitions from School to Work in Bulgaria

In the past years there has been a growing concern in Europe with the drawbacks in youth transition from education to employment and social participation more generally (European Commission (EC) 2001

The Changing Nature of Employment and the Reform of Labor and Social Security Legislation in Post-Apartheid South Africa

This paper tries to understand the current status of South African labor market, which is changing in contradictory directions, i.e. a strengthening of the rights and protection of workers at the same time as the flexibilization of employment, in the context of the characteristics of labor and social security legislation in South Africa, as well as the nature of labor and social security reforms after democratization. We put emphasis on the corporatist nature of labor policy-making as the factor influencing the course of reforms; it is argued that the apparently contradictive changes can be explained consistently by the corporatist labor policy-making process which has been practiced notwithstanding the problem of representativeness.

Understanding HCI policy in Spain in the context of acces

Spain pioneered policies related to disability and accessibility, especially in the physical environment. The first major piece of legislation was Act 13/1982 on the Social Integration of People with Disabilities. The law was published just a few years after the reinstitution of democracy in Spain in 1977 and the approval of the Spanish Constitution in 1978. Act 13/1982 is a general law that applies accessibility to social services and education, as well as to workplace and physical accessibility. This law targeted first and foremost the social integration of people with disabilities, and it was a significant success, especially in the field of employment, as it made it mandatory for private companies and public administrations to employ a certain percentage of persons with disabilities. This greatly increased the employability of people with disabilities, as highlighted in a document celebrating 30 years of Act 13/1982. Over the past 20 years, policy makers have also focused on accessibility to information and communication technologies (ICT), developing first the national computing accessibility standards and then specialized legislation. Initially, Spanish activities were mostly national but have now gained an international dimension. All these initiatives are strongly related to the discipline of human-computer interaction, as the key component of an accessible system is its user interface.

Employment rate impacts of charging the Heavy Good Vehicle corridor (Madrid-Sevilla) across Spanish regions: a Random Utility Based Multiregional Input-Output approach

The implementation of a charging policy for heavy goods vehicles in European Union (EU) member countries has been imposed to reflect costs of construction and maintenance of infrastructure as well as externalities such as congestion, accidents and environmental impact. In this context, EU countries approved the Eurovignette directive (1999/62/EC) and its amending directive (2006 /38/EC) which established a legal framework to regulate the system of tolls. Even if that regulation seek s to increase the efficien cy of freight, it will trigger direct and indirect effects on Spain’s regional economies by increasing transport costs. This paper presents the development of a multiregional Input-Output methodology (MRIO) with elastic trade coefficients to predict in terregional trade, using transport attributes integrated in multinomial logit models. This method is highly useful to carry out an ex-ante evaluation of transport policies because it involves road freight transport cost sensitivity, and determine regional distributive and substitution economic effect s of countries like Spain, characterized by socio-demographic and economic attributes, differentiated region by region. It will thus be possible to determine cost-effective strategies, given different policy scenarios. MRIO mode l would then be used to determine the impact on the employment rate of imposing a charge in the Madrid-Sevilla corridor in Spain. This methodology is important for measuring the impact on the employment rate since it is one of the main macroeconomic indicators of Spain’s regional and national economic situation. A previous research developed (DESTINO) using a MRIO method estimated employment impacts of road pricing policy across Spanish regions considering a fuel tax charge (€/liter) in the entire shortest cost path network for freight transport. Actually, it found that the variation in employment is expected to be substantial for some regions, and negligible for others. For example, in this Spanish case study of regional employment has showed reductions between 16.1% (Rioja) and 1.4% (Madrid region). This variation range seems to be related to either the intensity of freight transport in each region or dependency of regions to transport intensive economic sect ors. In fact, regions with freight transport intensive sectors will lose more jobs while regions with a predominantly service economy undergo a fairly insignificant loss of employment. This paper is focused on evaluating a freight transport vehicle-kilometer charge (€/km) in a non-tolled motorway corridor (A-4) between Madrid-Sevilla (517 Km.). The consequences of the road pricing policy implementation show s that the employment reductions are not as high as the diminution stated in the previous research because this corridor does not affect the whole freight transport system of Spain.