Augusto de la Torre

Guillermo Beylis

Eduardo Levy Yeyati

Tatiana Didier

Carlos Rodriguez Castelan

Sergio Schmukler

As usual in this series, Chapter 1 reviews the configuration of global risks and assesses the outstanding short term opportunities and challenges facing the LAC region. We document the significant slowdown in economic activity across the region, and explore the possibility of this being the ‘new normal’. In Chapter 2 we assess if the major social gains achieved during the ‘Golden Decade’, in particular the decline in inequality, will hold in this less supportive environment, and discuss alternative policy responses to preserve and further the equity gains in the region.

Inequality in a Lower Growth Latin America

LAC Semiannual Report October 2014

Michael Morris

Roberto Fattal Jaef

Rishabh Sinha

COVID-19 started as a health emergency, but it is rapidly evolving into an employment crisis. There is still uncertainty on how severe the economic impact of the pandemic will be. As things go, however, the drag on the region’s employment could last longer than the epidemic itself. Beyond the immediate impacts on the level of employment, the crisis is deepening and accelerating the transformation of jobs, bringing the future closer. Going Viral: COVID-19 and the Accelerated Transformation of Jobs in Latin America and the Caribbean focuses on recent trends in the economies of the region that have been significantly changing the labor market: premature deindustrialization, the servicification of the economy, and the changing skill requirements of jobs as automation advances. The findings of this report have important implications for economic policy. Some of these implications are related to the productivity challenges that Latin America and the Caribbean was already facing after the end of the “Golden Decade†? in 2013. Other policy implications see their relevance enhanced by the COVID-19 crisis. As sectors are impacted in different ways, as new technologies are developed and adopted, and as working remotely becomes more common, governments need to respond in ways that support a smooth transformation of jobs—one that is socially acceptable and that contributes to productivity growth, including investing in the human capital of the workforce. The accelerated transformation of jobs also calls for a rethinking of labor regulations and social protection policies. The institutional architecture geared to wage earners in the formal sector is quickly becoming outdated. The report calls for the flexible regulation of the emerging forms of work, in a way that encourages employment and supports formalization, thereby expanding the coverage of social protection. to larger segments

COVID-19 and the Accelerated Transformation of Jobs in Latin America and the Caribbean

Going Viral

Guillermo Beylis

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