Labor Intermediation Services in Developing Economies: Adapting Employment Services for a Global Age

162 Pages·2017·1.661 MB·English

by  Jacqueline Mazza (auth.)

LABOR INTERMEDIATION
SERVICES IN
DEVELOPING ECONOMIES
Adapting Employment Services
for a Global Age
Jacqueline Mazza
Labor Intermediation Services in Developing
Economies
Jacqueline Mazza
Labor Intermediation
Services in
Developing
Economies
Adapting Employment Services for a Global Age
Jacqueline Mazza
Johns Hopkins University
School of Advanced International Studies
Washington, DC, USA
ISBN 978-1-137-48667-7 ISBN 978-1-137-48668-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-48668-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016959411
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For my son Daniel
P
reface
In 1904 in urban Philadelphia, USA, William Rees, a weaver, walked from
employer to employer, sometimes four miles a day to find work.1 More
than 100 years later, throughout the developing world, such informal,
inefficient ways to find low-paid work remain. Today in Mexico City, if
you need a plumber you can still stroll to the Zocalo, Mexico’s ancient
Aztec plaza, and find an aging plumber sitting in front of a cardboard box
marked “plomero.”
Spanning the industrial to post-industrial age, the United States and
the now developed nations grew extensive and diffuse markets that con-
nect job seekers with work and the skills to get work. Wandering grew
to newspaper want ads to employment services offices to today all of the
above – internet-based job services, walk-in employment service centers,
graduate schools placing their students, recruitment agencies and personal
contacts. Economists would call this a “market” between buyers and sell-
ers of labor services, working imperfectly but much better than in devel-
oping economies.
Developing economies in the 21st century are more informal, have
greater poverty, and share market and migration routes with highly
advanced economies using electronic networks – a complexity unimagina-
ble to William Rees walking the streets of Philadelphia only 100 years ago.
But too often in developing countries traces of a vibrant job search market
are hard to find, particularly for the world’s poor. The majority of the poor
in the developing world find work through other poor friends and fam-
ily – and guess what? They find other precarious, dead-end jobs, or invent
vii
viii PREfACE
ones most cannot imagine, such as seller of empty milk containers (rural
Tanzania), garbage picker (India), or fire eater at a traffic stop (Mexico).
This book is for developing countries and policy practitioners who do
not have the luxury of a century of development to create more formal
markets to help workers find better work. It is the product of 20 years of
practical experience trying to help build labor services to combat the cha-
otic, elite-biased ways of finding work in the developing world, principally
in Latin America and the Caribbean, but now for other developing econo-
mies. It is a book about how developing countries can and are already
improving how people get jobs. It is a book with developing country
examples at every turn. These countries started with what the developed
world calls “employment services” but they quickly learned that the limita-
tions of public financing, informal economies and poor job creation would
never sustain the employment services models of the developed countries.
What this book lays out are stages to building from basic employment ser-
vices to a more country-specific set of “labor intermediation services” that
better fit the institutional and market challenges of developing economies
in a more global world.
Your indulgence is requested in my using the term “developing coun-
tries” to represent a broad spectrum of countries from low-income econ-
omies to former transition economies to high-income Middle Eastern
countries to emerging economies that have graduated to OECD member-
ship, such as Korea and Chile. The term “developing countries” is used
as an inaccurate shorthand but with the goal of drawing common lessons
across developing and now highly developed economies, even if many
have now leaped out of the developing category.
Economists widely – and rightly – argue that the key problem in devel-
oping economies is not finding a good job, it’s that enough good jobs
aren’t there. No argument there. This book is not a fight with those econ-
omists. Rather it is to show what 20 years of practical experience have
taught me. That by small investments in basic employment services – the
easiest and actually most cost-effective active labor market policy – one can
stimulate and support the growth of a wider range of labor intermediation
services that can play a role in providing better market signals to schools,
training institutions and private firms. It is one piece, not a panacea, for fix-
ing the jobs quagmire in the developing world. The last chapter discusses
a bit more how intermediation can be integrated within larger jobs and
human capital efforts.
PREfACE ix
The next age of development is coming around to a more conscious
focus on employment as the most promising route out of poverty or, as
recently put, “development happens through jobs.” In doing so, better
labor intermediation services will have a role to play but we have to think
differently about them and their connections with education, training,
skills and economic growth.
This book would not be possible without the open doors of Labor
Ministries, national employment services, NGO specialists, private sector
leaders and dedicated professionals who have enabled me to watch, shape
and learn what is working in very different developing country econo-
mies. I particularly thank colleagues at the Inter-American Development
Bank where I worked for over 15 years, the World Bank, and International
Labour Organization who helped me learn while doing. Sabina Viera
Almeida da Silva and Caitlyn McCrone of the Johns Hopkins University,
School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) provided excellent
research support. I dedicate this book to my college son Daniel who
already sees the world more connected than I. His sage advice was: don’t
make this book “too boring.” Well, let’s see.
Note
1. As cited in Joshua Rosenbloom, Looking for Work, Searching for Workers,
2002, p. xiii.
Johns Hopkins University Jacqueline Mazza
School of Advanced International Studies
Washington, DC, USA
c
oNteNts
1 Jobs and Job Search in Developing Countries:
Nice Work if You Can Get it! 1
2 Employment and Labor Intermediation Services:
What Are They and What Are They Good For? 19
3 Stage 1: Building Core Employment Services 39
4 Stage 2: From Employment to Labor Intermediation
Services 65
5 A Stage 3? Labor Intermediation and the New Jobs
Agenda for Development 113
Bibliography 137
Index 145
xi
L f B
ist of igures aNd oxes
Graph 1.1 “friends and family” – dominant job search
method in Latin America 4
Graph 1.2 Informal job search greater for the less educated 5
Graph 1.3 Employer difficulty in filling skilled jobs, 2015 14
Graph 3.1 Proportion of individuals with internet access
by region 50
Graph 4.1 Growth in individuals using the internet
by income classification 90
Box 3.1 Seven Years in Honduras: A Stage 1 Public-Private
Launchpad for Jobs 44
Box 3.2 Neighbor-to-Neighbor: Advancing a Regional Technical
Support Network in Employment Services 55
Box 3.3 Growing from Crisis Mode: South Korea’s Rapid Transition
out of Stage 1 61
Box 4.1 Building Life and Job Skills in Poor Neighborhoods:
Youth Build goes International and to South Africa 77
Box 5.1 Riviera Maya, Mexico: Strategic Growth in Tourism,
Integrating from the Right and Center 121
Box 5.2 Hungary: Advancing a Career-Development/Guidance
System in a Skills-Driven Economy 133
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