Increasing productivity and reducing vulnerable employment

SDG 8 aims to promote economic growth and decent work for all. Economies grow when more workers have access to jobs and when workers are more productive.

The COVID-19 pandemic has considerably impacted employment opportunities in countries around the world. In January 2020, before the pandemic, global GDP was projected to grow by 2.5 percent in 2020; in June 2020 it was projected to contract by 5.2 percent, with even steeper contractions in some regions. That would mark the deepest recession in eight decades.

Over the near term, restoring employment will be critical to growing economies. Restoring progress in access to well-paying jobs for women, young people, and persons with disabilities will be particularly important because these groups have typically had lower labor force participation rates and lower earnings (SDG target 8.5).

But returning to the status quo will not be enough to achieve SDG 8. Improving worker productivity will be key as well. Worker productivity is closely related to how much workers earn and GDP (SDG target 8.1 and target 8.2).

There are many ways to improve work productivity including by building human capital through improvements to education and health, by improving infrastructure, and by applying new technology (SDG target 8.2). Another, and the focus of the remainder of this chapter, is economic transformation.

Economic transformation

To grow over the long term, economies need to transform in a way that promotes high-productivity work (SDG target 8.2 and target 8.3). Among low-income economies, those that transitioned from low-productivity sectors to high-productivity sectors accounted for over two-thirds of total productivity growth. This has generally meant shifting from low- to high-productivity agriculture, toward urbanization, and away from vulnerable employment.

The share of workers in agriculture, the share of the population in urban areas, and the share of vulnerable workers has shifted markedly since the early 1990s. Globally, the share of workers in agriculture has dropped from just over 40 percent in 1991 to just over 25 percent in 2019. The share of the population in urban areas has grown from a little over 43 percent in 1991 to around 55 percent in 2019. And the share of vulnerable workers has shrunk from over 53 percent in 1991 to under 45 percent in 2019. More progress is needed, particularly in vulnerable employment.

Reducing the share of workers in vulnerable employment has taken on new urgency with the COVID-19 pandemic. Vulnerable workers are affected by the pandemic in two ways. First, many have jobs that are highly exposed to the economic impacts of COVID-19. Own-account workers and micro-enterprise workers, considered to be vulnerable workers, account for 70 percent of global employment in the retail trade and 60 percent of employment in accommodations and food services. Second, vulnerable workers rarely have access to social protection and labor programs to help weather job losses during the pandemic (SDG target 8.b).

Women and young people are particularly susceptible to the effects of the pandemic (SDG target 8.5). According to a report by the ILO, women are more exposed than men to job losses due to COVID-19: 42 percent of female workers are in highly impacted sectors compared with 32 percent of men. And 77 percent of young workers are in informal jobs compared with 60 percent of adult workers. The rate of vulnerable employment among young workers is over 95 percent in low and lower middle income countries.

Since the 1990s economies have greatly transformed, and GDP growth has followed. Further progress is needed in other dimensions, including improving opportunities for younger workers (SDG target 8.6); eradicating forced labor, modern slavery, and human trafficking (SDG target 8.7); boosting sustainable tourism (SDG target 8.8); expanding access to banking, insurance, and financial services (SDG target 8.10); and increasing aid for trade support (SDG target 8.a).