Social Protection

Labor Markets

Work is the poor's main source of earning. Understanding labor markets is essential to reduce poverty and ensure inclusive labor absorption and efficient development patterns. Improving labor market operations is also an important element of strategies to develop human capital, address gender discrimination, and enhance welfare and productivity.

Labor market interventions:

• Active labor market programs include
• direct employment generation - promoting small and medium enterprises, public works
• labor exchanges or employment services - job brokerage, counseling - linking supply with demand for labor
• skills development programs - training and retraining of labor


• Passive labor market policies include
• unemployment insurance
• income support
• an appropriate legislative framework that strikes a balance between economic efficiency and labor protection including safe working conditions, minimum wages, social security contributions, and other labor standards

Read the summary on ADB's committment to Core Labor Standards [ PDF: 150kb | 2 pages ].

Cross-border labor migration is an increasingly important labor market issue for Asian countries. It is important to make sure that sufficient legal frameworks exist for protecting rights of migrant workers while reducing irregular migration. ADB addresses safe migration by reducing vulnerability to human trafficking risks among migrating population.

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Guidelines

• Core Labor Standards Handbook
• Labor Issues in Public Enterprise Restructuring [ PDF: 418kb | 42 pages ]
• ADB's Guidelines in Preparing a Summary Labor Market Assessment in DMCs [ PDF: 42kb | 4 pages ]
• How ADB Incorporates Labor Issues in Projects [ PDF: 126kb | 31 pages ]
• The Theoretical Background of Labor Market Policies [ PDF: 2,698kb | 54 pages ]
• Crafting Labor Market Projects [ PDF: 986kb | 19 pages ]
• ADB Good Practices in Mitigating Possible Unintended Adverse Effects on Labor of ADB Loans (labor retrenchments) [ PDF: 81kb | 12 pages ]

Resource Materials

• Workshop on Social Protection
• Introduction
• Labor Markets
• Labor Standards and Development
• Working with Labor Unions

Projects

See ADB Social Protection Projects, 1997-2003: Labor Markets for a list of ADB projects with labor markets components.