This report puts the creation of more productive and better-paying jobs at the center of country growth strategies, presenting new data revealing how patterns of jobs and production vary across different stages of the development process. It aims to help practitioners prioritize policy areas around three pillars: production, people, and places.
How to Transform Agricultural Water Management to Feed 10 Billion People on a Livable Planet
Offers policy makers a new Water/Food Nexus framework and actionable strategies to boost food production, create millions of jobs, and build climate resilience, repurposing public spending and harnessing data, digital tools, and services to manage green and blue water sustainably.
Skills development in the East Asia and Pacific region is uneven: some countries build advanced skills while others struggle with basics, facing trade traps or innovation inertia. The report analyzes skills supply and demand, examining how enhanced workforce capacities can match evolving economic opportunities.
East Asia's export-led, labor-intensive growth relied on open markets and abundant basic skills. Rising protection, rapid technological change, aging, and climate risks are eroding this model. The report assesses these shifts and proposes a three-pronged response: harness technology, pursue domestic reforms, and deepen international cooperation.
The report will examine how economies in East Asia and Pacific can reform their fiscal frameworks to support growth and ensure that it is inclusive and resilient.
Self-Employment and Job Quality in Latin America and the Caribbean
Drawing on new data and modeling, the report challenges the traditional view of informality as a homogenous and primarily disadvantaged sector and provides a framework for understanding the logic and dynamics of the sector.
Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing economies, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). Each edition includes analytical pieces on topical policy challenges faced by these economies.
Moving Infrastructure from a Resource-Gap to a Priority-Based Approach
This report introduces the first global, geolocated database of physical infrastructure assets and a framework to guide investment priorities. Comparing social returns with borrowing costs reveals widespread underinvestment across energy, transport, and digital sectors, with especially high returns to transport in developing countries.
Labor Markets and Shocks in the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan,and Pakistan
MENAAP's labour markets underperform, limiting quality jobs for youth amid state dominance and a constrained private sector. This report synthesizes evidence to guide policies for resilient, inclusive labour markets that better harness human capital.
