ILO and the World Bank Group

The ILO and World Bank share similar challenges: poverty and exclusion, a global financial and jobs crisis and growing inequality. Our organizations bring different strengths and approaches to development challenges but with a shared goal of making a lasting difference in people’s lives. Our institutions are working together on several fronts, leveraging our talents and expertise.

Social protection and jobs are at the center of the development agenda. Social protection is not residual, but an integral part of an inclusive growth strategy. The ILO contributed to the World Bank’s Social Protection and Labor Strategy 2012-2022 being part of the consultations during 2011. The ten-year strategy calls for investing in stronger social protection and labor systems, expanding the reach of safety nets and it was launched in 2012.

Moreover, both institutions worked together during 2010-2011 on a first comprehensive stocktaking of countries’ jobs-related policy responses to the recent global financial and economic crisis (2008-2010). Teams from both institutions worked incessantly to produce an inventory with more than 3,600 policy responses covering 77 countries – the first and largest of its kind. A follow-up to a request from leaders at the 2009 G20 Pittsburgh Summit, the report “Inventory of Policy Responses to the Financial and Economic Crisis”, demonstrates how governments across the globe and of all income levels used labor market interventions to limit the economic and social impacts of the crisis and spur employment, household income, and economic growth, and reduce poverty. The online data tool provides a detailed track record of policies enacted during the height of the financial crisis, and implications for the design of policies to address future economic downturns.

Further, the ILO participated in World Bank consultations for the 2013 World Development Report on jobs  -- from its conceptual stage forward. The report provides analytical tools to identify the obstacles to sustained job creation and examine differences in the nature of jobs, which in turn affects the potential of jobs to raise living standards, increase aggregate productivity, and enhance social cohesion.