Employment

While media consumption has accelerated during the pandemic, the main currency used for media monetization – advertising spend – has been pulled back across many channels, due to both economic and social concerns. Recently, many brands have halted their spending on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. While the advertising revenue of such platforms is driven largely by small and medium enterprises, events of late may signal a larger shift in focus to the role that one’s business decisions play in driving societal change. For media companies with significant reach and influence over consumers, this responsibility is even more crucial. We assessed how media organizations responded to COVID-19 and addressed their societal responsibility. In this second paper, we focus on the near-term and medium-term actions that can be taken to improve the financial viability, resilience and sustainability of the industry. We focus on four key areas: Creating a stronger media ecosystem across content creation, distribution and consumption innovation. We identified five key areas to drive a stronger media ecosystem: enhanced trust and transparency, better alignment of value with investments, media pluralism, a global community of creators and viewers, and renewed consumer focus. We examined the demonetization of harmful content through initiatives such as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, in partnership with the Forum’s “Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment and Culture” platform. Accelerating digital transformation to drive innovation. Digital distribution is no longer a choice – companies must decide whether to build, buy or partner to increase their digital capabilities.–New digital production methods have created lower-cost and more authentic content – companies should consider how they adopt end-to-end cloud production tools to capture, edit, finalize and distribute content in a single workflow from start to finish. Notable innovation in the use of data-driven tools for revenue projections, content curation and moderation, and user experience will present new decisions for businesses. With a significant increase in cyber threats during the COVID era, businesses need to take practical steps to increase their cyber resilience. Adapting the workforce and ways of working to support the next phase of industry growth. Work has transitioned to home-office settings with varying degrees of effectiveness – businesses should consider what capabilities are needed to operate in a hybrid work model in the future. Worker profiles in demand will be in big data, analytics and revenue-related functions, as well as in security and data privacy, but the industry is unlikely to go back to pre-COVID employment levels. With heavy reliance on freelance and contract work, there is an opportunity to revisit the industry’s duty of care to its workers and reset on its representation of minorities. In addition, employers will need to find new ways to protect employees’ safety and mental health. Supporting responsible business through global sustainable development goals (SDGs) –The urgency to act as responsible media businesses has never been higher, with three-quarters of media chief executive officers recognizing the critical role1 of businesses in society and three out of five consumers claiming to avoid brands that do not demonstrate progress against the goals affecting our society and planet. Businesses should evaluate their impact in terms of environmental and social considerations and reset their activities in line with the SDGs. Responsible leadership is a critical enabler of sustainable governance. Top leaders exhibit five elements of responsible leadership: 1) stakeholder inclusion; 2) emotion and intuition; 3) mission and purpose; 4) technology and innovation; and 5) intellect and insight. At the end of this paper, we identify actions that companies can take immediately, such as reviewing their media investment strategies, employing new brand safety tools, implementing new ways to create an engaged workforce and many others. A number of the companies engaged for this report have already committed to such actions, and we encourage other companies for which these steps are relevant to carry them out within their own businesses. In the final paper of this series, we will highlight the lasting industry shifts that will result from the current crisis and the long-term plans that various parts of the media ecosystem should consider when developing their strategies.

Incorporating the most recent labour market information available, Global Employment Trends for Youth sets out the youth labour market situation around the world. It shows where progress has or has not been made, updates world and regional youth labour market indicators, and gives detailed analyses of medium-term trends in youth population, labour force, employment and unemployment. The 2020 edition discusses the implications of technological change for the nature of jobs available to young people. It focuses on shifts in job characteristics, sectors and skills, as well as examining the impact of technological change on inequalities in youth labour markets.

In 1989, the ILO adopted the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No. 169. Since then, the Convention has been ratified by 23 countries, and has guided and inspired governments, trade unions and employers’ organizations as well as indigenous peoples across the world in their work to promote and protect indigenous peoples’ rights.
Thirty years have passed since the adoption of Convention No. 169. This report presents the social and economic situation of indigenous women and men today by looking at key aspects such as population, employment and poverty, as well as the important strides made in public policies, particularly with regard to institutions, consultation and participation. It highlights the critical role of the Convention as a framework for social justice, peace, participatory democracy, and inclusive and sustainable development for all – which is necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and undertake meaningful climate action.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is creating demand for millions of new jobs, with vast new opportunities for fulfill-ing people’s potential and aspirations. However, in order to turn these opportunities into reality, new sources of data and innovative approaches to understand emerging jobs and skills, as well as to empower effective and coordinated large-scale action are urgently needed across the globe. This report, Jobs of Tomorrow: Mapping Opportunity in the New Economy, takes an in-depth look into the ‘black box’ of new job creation, reviewing the shifting focus of employment to emerging professions of the future, the reasons behind it and what skills will be required by these professions. The analysis presented in this report is based on inno-vative metrics authored in partnership between the World Economic Forum’s New Metrics CoLab in its Platform for the New Economy and Society, and data scientists at three part-ner companies: Burning Glass Technologies, Coursera and LinkedIn. Through these collaborations, the report provides insights into emerging opportunities for employment across the global economy as well as unique detail regarding the skill sets needed to leverage those opportunities.Key findings include:≥Demand for both “digital” and “human” factors is driving growth in the professions of the future. Seven key professional clusters are emerging in tandem. On the one hand, these reflect the adoption of new technologies—giving rise to greater demand for green economy jobs, roles at the forefront of the data and AI economy as well as new roles in engineering, cloud computing and product development. On the other hand, emerging professions also reflect the continuing importance of human interaction in the new economy, giving rise to greater demand for care economy jobs; roles in marketing, sales and content production; as well as roles at the forefront of people and culture. Indeed, the future of work shows demand for a broad variety of skills that match these professional opportunities, inclusive of both disruptive technical skills but also specialized industry skills and core business skills.≥There are seven emerging professional clusters and 96 jobs of tomorrow within them that vary in their individual rate of growth and in the scale of job opportunities they offer in the aggregate.

The OECD Economic Outlook is the OECD's twice-yearly analysis of the major economic trends and prospects for the next two years. The Outlook puts forward a consistent set of projections for output, employment, prices, fiscal and current account balances.
Coverage is provided for all OECD member countries as well as for selected non-member countries. This issue includes a general assessment, a series of focus notes on selected macroeconomic and structural issues, and a chapter summarising developments and providing projections for each individual country.

This synthesis report presents the main findings from a multi-year research project conducted by the ILO to assess how income support and active labour market policies (ALMPs) can come together to improve the employ-ment and life trajectories of workers, particularly in emerging and developing countries. The research question was derived from an earlier ILO project entitled “Active labour market policies in Latin America and the Caribbean”, specifically from the project’s conclusion that, while ALMPs are indeed able to improve workers’ labour market prospects, the success of such interventions hinges on their accessibility. In several cases, a critical missing piece seemed to be adequate income support, which appeared to be a prerequisite for workers in the region to participate fully in activation programmes. The purpose of the present report is thus to shed light on how approaches based on a combination of income support and active support can be used to respond effectively to contemporary labour market challenges in developing and emerging economies.The report is being issued at a time when governments are faced with the challenge of creating better quality employment opportunities in a world where rapid changes are compounding long standing labour market problems. In this respect, the report shows that the policy combinations studied can make a difference, even in the challenging context of contem-porary labour markets. The new evidence presented indicates that the joint implementation of ALMPs and income support measures, if organized properly, can achieve the dual aim of protecting workers while improving their access to decent work. Multiple policy combinations are possible, and so it is important to identify the factors that determine the success (or otherwise) of such an integrated approach, particularly in emerging and developing countries, where labour ma number of methods, including a literature review, a cross-country map-ping, a comparative macroeconomic study, and two case studies based on microeconomic impact evaluations and qualitative research.