This paper examines the challenges facing the labour market in the Caribbean, including youth unemployment, the mismatch between the educational system and the needs of the labour market, the creation of jobs, the low levels of productivity coupled with relatively high wages, the emigration of skilled labour from the region and inadequate labour market information. A number of policy measures are suggested for dealing with these challenges: educational and training reform, gain sharing schemes, export promotion, greater social dialogue, revised labour legislation, establishment of mutually advantageous relation with citizens living outside of the region, and development of a labour market information system.

More than a decade has passed since the introduction of comprehensive macroeconomic stabilization packages and trade, fiscal, and financial market reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, growth prospects remain disappointing; labor markets show lackluster performance, with low participation rates, high and persistent informality, and, in some cases, open unemployment. Creating viable and lasting employment is vital to reduce poverty and spread prosperity in the region. The failure to create more and more productive and rewarding jobs carries substantial political, social, and economic costs. 'Job Creation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Recent Trends and Policy Challenges' provides a thorough examination of the labor market trends in the region in recent decades and assesses the role that labor demand and labor supply factors have played in shaping these outcomes.

The paper examines the determinants of employment growth, drawing on data available across a sample of Caribbean countries. To that end, the paper analyzes estimates of the employment-output elasticity and the response of employment growth to major sources of labor market determinants, in the long and short run. The main determinants of employment include government investment and private sector credit, while the major determinants of external performance are real effective exchange rate, the price of major exporting commodities, the number of tourists, and growth in major trading partners. The paper concludes with a menu of policy recommendations and structural reforms towards sustaining high employment growth and higher living standards in the Caribbean.

This study highlights the interaction between social protection (SP) programs and labor markets in the Latin America region. It presents new evidence on the limited coverage of existing programs and emphasizes the challenges caused by high informality for achieving universal social protection for old age income, health, unemployment risks and anti-poverty safety nets. It identifies interaction effects between SP programs and the behavioral responses of workers, firms and social protection providers, which can further undermine efforts to expand coverage, summarizing evidence from recent work across the region. The book argues for a re-design of financing to eliminate cross subsidies between members of contributory programs and subsidies that effectively tax income from formal employment. It advocates well-targeted, tax-funded, tapered subsidies to provide incentives to the savings efforts of low-income workers, coupled with an effective safety net for the extreme poor who have no capacity to contribute to financing their own social protection arrangements. It also argues for the consolidation of programs and harmonization of benefits packages across different insurers. The book develops an overall conceptual framework and presents in-depth analysis of the main SP sectors of pensions, health, unemployment insurance and labor market programs, and safety net transfers.

This study examines the application of the flexicurity labour system in the Caribbean countries of Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. The flexicurity system has its origins in Denmark and combines elements of labour market flexibility with social security for workers. After outlining the elements of the system, The study provides an overview of the labour market in the Caribbean and compares the performance of Denmark with the three Caribbean countries. While that flexicurity system has some attractive features its full implementation is limited in the Caribbean since the institutional framework has not been fully developed to sustain the implementation of the system And The costs of the system can be a burden to national governments. it is however possible those elements of the system can be applied To The Caribbean countries (and have been applied). Labour market reform in the region can however take elements of the system into consideration.