Ensuring full employment

Remunerative employment and productive occupational opportunities compatible with country-specific factor endowments need to be generated on a scale sufficient to take care of prospective increases in the labour force and to cover backlogs. Emphasizing the need to find sources of new jobs and re-define continuing jobs to aid in employment and provide jobs for the jobless would have the effect of employing the maximum number of people. This would provide a stable economic dynamic.

An integral part of integrating labour capabilities through a global network of employable exchanges.

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities.

Tactics include: trained forces to organize training programmes to relate to what skills are actually needed; labour exchange to enable workers to move from one place to another for the area of most need; service opportunities to maintain opportunities through volunteer assignments and guilds; unemployment re-engagement; and qualifications rationale to rationally relate qualifications for a given job to the requirements for that job. An example would be to use senior citizens in taking a community survey.

ILO encourages governments to adopt and implement active policies designed to promote full, productive and freely chosen employment as reinforced by various Conventions and Recommendations. ILO assists governments in the formulation and implementation of those overall employment and development strategies which maximize employment growth. It promotes and assists in the implementation of sectoral policies, and policies on technology design and dissemination in order to increase employment and reduce poverty, especially in the rural and urban informal sector. ILO assists in the formulation and implementation of manpower and labour market policies to improve the functioning of labour markets, enhance the effective utilization of labour and increase the demand for labour. It promotes equality of opportunity and treatment for women and for migrant workers and their families. ILO provides assistance in the design and implementation of programmes and projects for direct employment creation and income generation for vulnerable groups. It improves the information base for monitoring employment and labour market trends and for the formulation of employment policies. ILO strengthens the capacity of governments to formulate and implement employment-promoting programmes and projects.