ARE my decisions indirectly or directly creating jobs? Every leader in the public and private sectors today must ask this urgent question to hit the ground running for 2021. Given the magnitude of the pandemic on our current economic situation, especially the staggering and unprecedented loss of jobs around the world in record time or less than a year – every decent leader, mover, key decision-maker in this country should consciously realize how their every decision, action, strategy or intervention, or the lack or absence thereof, affect the creation or continued loss of jobs and opportunities in their respective areas of influence, their cities, their communities.
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), almost 1.6 billion informal economy workers (representing the most vulnerable in the labor market), out of a worldwide total of two billion and a global workforce of 3.3 billion, have suffered massive damage to their capacity to earn a living. This is a result of the economic crisis created by the pandemic, particularly, due to lockdown measures or because they work in the hardest-hit sectors.
The ILO cites that worldwide, more than 436 million enterprises face high risks of serious disruption. These enterprises are operating in the hardest-hit economic sectors, including some 232 million in wholesale and retail, 111 million in manufacturing, 51 million in accommodation and food services, and 42 million in real estate and other business activities.
ILO Director-General Guy Rider stresses that for these millions of workers, no income means no food, no security and no future.
Here are some questions that need to be asked by every leader, from all sectors. What are the strategies and interventions undertaken by your leaders directly and indirectly to lessen the impact of joblessness on the overall economy? How did your sector or institution play a role in designing these strategies? How were your sectors' existing material and knowledge resources harnessed and integrated into the strategies? Were you able to gather insights directly or indirectly from stakeholders to design the overall strategy?
Moving forward, I do not think anyone who calls himself or herself a leader, whether in government, business, academe and other sectors can continue to lead without asking these questions. There must be something wrong either externally or internally.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under Goal 8 calls for all countries to make decent work and economic growth a reality. After Covid-19 hit the world, we all need to ask whether we are still on track.
One of the glaring factors that need to be addressed is the dearth or real-time comprehensive data. Lack of data is dangerous. The UN has estimated that the pandemic is reversing decades of progress and that an estimated 71 million people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020.
Citing Claire Melamed, CEO of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, “data is never going to be the sexiest area of policymaking. It is always felt like a separate thing - do you want to invest in data, or do you want to invest in health? What Covid has shown us is that investing in data is investing in health and you cannot have a good health system, cannot have rapid response, cannot protect people unless you know who you are trying to protect and what is wrong.”
Most data experts and practitioners agree that the pandemic highlighted the lack of comprehensive large scale, disaggregated data. Many have raised concerns about the timeliness and availability of socioeconomic data — and agree that data is not being constantly updated for all countries at the same scale or rate.
There are so many indicators to consider in creating jobs and opportunities. As a country, we need to have a strong industry database to identify specific strengths and weaknesses per industry and to be able to address specific long-standing concerns of each industry, most especially the factors of production like manpower, skills and competencies, cost of doing businesses, even speed, quality and rate connectivity matter much today.
It is time to aggressively bring this laser-focused consciousness of creating jobs down to the city level – with every sector understanding their institutional and individual roles in building a job-ready ecosystem. But every city will need a champion or a group of champions for job creation.