World Bank and Global Labor Market Conference Deepen Partnership to Shape the Future of Work

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The World Bank and the Global Labor Market Conference (GLMC) have struck a new three-year partnership to shape labor regulation and policy into the middle of the 21st century.

GLMC already had a strategic Knowledge Partnership with the World Bank with the new collaboration marking a major expansion of their work. Main elements include training global labor market policymakers of tomorrow and the ongoing delivery of research to provide groundbreaking insights for governments and organisations on themes including future labor market demands, employment trends, labor policy and the workforce skills development.

Upskilling Tomorrow's Labor Market Policymakers

The World Bank's collaboration with GLMC, a think tank for shaping real-world strategies to tackle labor market challenges, aims to produce a new vanguard of policymakers. These will primarily be drawn from nations under the World Bank mandate – equipping them with the insight, approaches, knowledge, and skills to create equitable and sustainable labor markets.

The world's labor market is undergoing profound transformations driven by the rapid rise of the Global South and unprecedented technological advancements. Developing nations are becoming significant players in global trade, while automation and digital innovation reshape industries and economies more than ever.

As these changes accelerate, there is a growing need for policy and policymakers who can navigate the complexities of an evolving workforce and an evolving world to ensure labor regulation contributes to shared global prosperity.

Training elements will therefore include:

• GLMC Labor Academy in collaboration with the World Bank and Takamol Holding: a three-year program designed to develop the international labor market experts who will shape tomorrow's policy across the entire labor market ecosystem, offering a platform for learning exchange across middle and low-income countries. The GLMC Labor Market Academy is a unique opportunity for policymakers to boost their personal development through access to World Bank expertise, as well as GLMC's knowledge base and global network. The inaugural GLMC Labor Market Academy was launched in Riyadh earlier this week at the backdrop of the second edition of the GLMC. Labor market policy makers from over 26 countries came to Riyadh to join the GLMC LM Academy, hosted by the Saudi Arabia Government and taught by the World Bank experts in Labor Markets, Social Protection, Skills and Workforce Development. Going forward a cohort of policy makers emerging from the GLMC LM Academy will form an international practice of policy makers taking labor markets innovation forward.
• GLMC-World Bank Policy Labs: a dedicated platform for in-depth discussions about specific policies, instruments and programs and their importance to improve labor market outcomes and skills development. During the Second Edition of the GLMC, taking place January 29-30, 2025, two Policy Labs will be delivered, focusing on addressing youth employment challenges through Active Labor Market Programs (ALMPs) and reducing skills mismatches by supporting private sector participation in skills development through Sectorial Skills Councils (SSCs).

Commenting on GLMC's expanded partnership with the World Bank, Safaa El Tayeb El-Kogali, World Bank Country Director for the (GCC) countries, said: "We are proud of the long-standing collaboration between the GLMC and the World Bank. Today, we are taking our partnership to a new level by jointly fostering knowledge exchange and sharing best practices with the global community. As we gather for the Second Edition of the GLMC, and look forward to many more to come, we share a mission that aims to advance innovative initiatives and comprehensive strategies to address the extraordinary shifts in the nature of work. From the rapid proliferation of AI to the urgent challenges of growing youth unemployment and the promising rise of green jobs, we at the World Bank, remain committed to shaping a more inclusive and resilient global workforce."

Delivering Research and Insights

Through joint research and the development of forward-thinking policies, GLMC and the World Bank's partnership aims to ensure that all countries, especially emerging economies, can benefit from a more inclusive and dynamic global labor market.

This week, GLMC and the World Bank will release a new approach paper, Making Labor Markets Work for the Youth, which analyzed the number of inactive youth, aged 15-24, in the labor market, and looks to identify the socio-economic consequences of youth inactivity, propose a framework to prioritize interventions to improve youth labor market outcomes and provides evidence on successful global interventions.

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