Armenia Skills toward Employment and Productivity : Survey Findings (Urban Areas)
Governments around the world assign top priority to job creation and productivity growth. Developing the right skills among potential and actual workers not only makes capital and labor more productive, it also makes the adoption and invention of n...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/09/26775048/armenia-skills-toward-employment-productivity-step-survey-findings-urban-areas http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25199 |
| Summary: | Governments around the world assign top
priority to job creation and productivity growth. Developing
the right skills among potential and actual workers not only
makes capital and labor more productive, it also makes the
adoption and invention of new technologies possible. Recent
research also indicates that skill acquisition has a
long-lasting impact on the trajectory of a person’s life and
that inequality in skills is associated with inequality in
income. Moreover, the proportion of non-agricultural
low-earning jobs is high in Armenia. Low-earning jobs are
defined as those that earn less than two-thirds of the
median wage. By this criterion, one in four jobs in Armenia
falls into this category, which represents a significantly
higher share than that in most European countries, where the
incidence of low pay is within the 15-20 percent range. The
significant presence of informality in non-agricultural
sectors is another factor that contributes to the
low-productivity and low-earnings employment. To better
understand skill shortages in Armenia, this report looks
into the current demand for skills from the labor market,
together with the landscape of skills formation and
utilization in the country, using the newly available data
from the World Bank’s Skills Toward Employment and
Productivity (STEP) household and employer surveys, which
were undertaken in the country between 2012 and 2013. These
extensive surveys sampled Armenia’s urban population and
firms. Based on these surveys, this report aims to provide a
key diagnosis of skills demand and supply issues in Armenia,
highlighting a few initial steps that need to be taken to
build a highly productive Armenian labor force, one that can
contribute to as well as benefit from the accelerated
economic growth. |
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