Can labor markets be rectified?
How can the recent bleak performance of Latin America’s labor markets be rectified? Good Jobs Wanted suggests first of all that governments adopt “policies to reduce macroeconomic volatility and create stable, growth-friendly macroeconomic conditions.” At the same time the report recommends a “new agenda” of labor policies to be carried about by a “strengthened labor authority” and a “complex network of public and private institutions.” The new agenda consists of four policy initiatives: increasing the efficiency of matching job opportunities with worker skills, insuring workers against the risk of job churning, expanding job training in a comprehensive and effective way, and enforcing regulations while promoting improved labor-management relations. A better system to match job openings with workers’ skills will reduce unemployment “by more quickly filling the available openings” as well as “increase the quality and therefore the productivity of job-worker matches.” More than half the
