Economic and social disruption unleashed by technological change and the climate emergency, demographic shifts, and the COVID-19 pandemic is hitting labour markets hard, affecting millions of people, especially women and youth. Comprehensive national employment policies and youth employment strategies are now even more critical for a job-rich recovery. The new ILO Employment Policy Gateway is a unique worldwide reference and source of information on national employment policies, and strategies to promote youth employment.

Q: What is the Employment Policy Gateway? Why do we need this?
A: This platform is the global reference on national employment policies and country strategies to promote youth employment. Over the years, there have been increasing requests from governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations for comparative information on employment policies and lessons learned, made available in one comprehensive format. The Employment Policy Gateway is the ILO’s response to meet these requests.

Q: For whom is it intended?
A: The Gateway is intended for governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations, research institutions, practitioners and other development stakeholders concerned with comprehensive policies and strategies for employment.

Q: How does the Gateway work? And, how does it support users in addressing policy challenges?
A: The format of the Gateway allows users to search existing national employment policies and youth employment strategies by region, country and theme, allowing information to be compared across countries and support research, analysis and policy.

The Gateway is structured in three interrelated sections: National Employment Policies (NEP)*, Youth Employment Strategies (YES), and an E-Library. Within the NEP section, which focuses on stand-alone comprehensive employment policies, users can find information on four key thematic areas - policy design processes, content of NEPS, implementation, and monitoring – allowing them to compare policies by country or theme as well as access the original source documents in the E-Library. Thematic data can be compared and downloaded as a Microsoft Excel file for research and analysis purposes.

The filters on design, implementation and monitoring can be used as a guide for users looking to address current policy challenges. For example, to learn about different stakeholders consulted in the formulation of national employment policies, users can search by stakeholder type, region or country to compare formulation approaches across countries and regions and gain insight into how current policies were designed.

The YES section of the platform provides global information on strategies developed within regions and by countries with options to filter contents through 13 thematic sections. Country profiles provide detailed information on national goals and quantitative targets on youth employment, action plans for implementation of the strategy, resource allocation to fund the strategy, and inclusiveness of vulnerable groups in the strategy, key strategy documents, and more.

Q: How is this platform different from other similar databases?
A: The experience of the ILO in working with member States on employment policies in the last two decades has resulted in growing knowledge of national employment policies and youth employment strategies. The ILO Employment Policy Gateway is an effort to ensure that these policies and strategies are systematically documented, analyzed and made available in an easy format for consultation.

The Gateway fills an existing gap in information and is the global reference on national employment policies and national strategies to promote youth employment. It is intended to: (i) catalogue global knowledge on officially endorsed national employment policies and youth employment strategies; (ii) help ILO constituents and other development stakeholders around the world access information on country-level policies and strategies for employment promotion; and, (iii) support research, analysis and policy making through hands-on information on existing policy instruments.

Q: How is data and information organized, analyzed, and stored on the platform?
A:. Within the NEP and YES sections data is collected and stored at the country level. Users can search and compare information by country, region or thematic area. Searching information by theme also allows for further filtering by sub-category. Thematic data can be compared and downloaded as a Microsoft Excel file for research and analysis. Country profiles in the YES section provide summaries of youth employment strategies by country. The E-Library catalogues source documents used in the Gateway in their original language.

Q: How will information contained on the Gateway benefit users over the longer term?
A: The Gateway will continue to update and expand its information, integrating additional countries and new features based on evolving contexts, including policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis.

*As defined by the ILO, a National Employment Policy (NEP) is a comprehensive, integrated policy framework that strives to influence the content of economic, sectoral and social policies, towards full, productive and freely chosen employment and decent jobs for all.