Employment promotion

More than 402 million people worldwide are willing to work, but unable to find jobs. They face many obstacles, particularly in the partner countries of Germany’s international cooperation. Jobseekers often lack the necessary qualifications and further training opportunities. In many cases, the resources and entrepreneurial skills needed to set up businesses are not available. 

Minorities and vulnerable groups such as young people, women and people with disabilities are particularly affected. At the same time, many companies around the world are experiencing a shortage of skilled labour. GIZ helps to align labour market supply and demand.

Through active labour market policy and measures, we make it easier for people to start working and achieve better employment and income-generating effects. Our activities include:

• Providing advice on employment strategies
• Developing training offerings
• Promoting entrepreneurship

Many partner countries lack reliable labour market data, so we improve both the quality of this information and access to it. We facilitate training in labour market data collection and analysis, the use of digital approaches and networking between authorities.

People in many countries suffer from poor working conditions, including exploitation, child labour and a lack of social protection. Around 700 million people worldwide live below the poverty line despite being in work (a category also known as the working poor). We are committed to ensuring that more people can find decent work – offering fair pay, social protection and workplace safety.

Decent work makes employees happier while also strengthening productivity, development and fairness.

Labour markets worldwide are in a state of flux. Demographic shifts, digital transformation and climate change are having negative impacts, such as unemployment, underemployment and informal employment. Many governments are therefore under pressure.

At the same time, there is a lack of participation: social partners such as trade unions and employers’ associations are often weak. We help these partners to fulfil their role in social dialogue – through training, exchange and the development of partnerships.

The aim is to establish fair and inclusive dialogue between the state, employers and employees.

Displacement exacerbates poverty and inequality. We work to improve the employment opportunities of displaced persons and host communities.

For this, we combine training with 

• business start-up assistance
• social protection
• psychosocial support and
• peacebuilding.

We advise governments, support vocational education and training and facilitate short-term income opportunities. Our work is always conflict sensitive and aligned with the ‘do no harm’ principle and the ‘leave no one behind’ pledge of the 2030 Agenda.

Digital platforms offer people around the world new employment prospects. However, not everyone has equal access or working conditions and there is often a lack of protection mechanisms for employees. The platforms themselves rarely take responsibility and are frequently opaque in how they exercise control.

We focus on training, fair conditions and the provision of targeted advice on labour and social law matters and standards, among other things. We help people with limited access to the labour market to transition to platform work by providing information on and raising awareness of the opportunities and challenges.

We advise governments on legal standards and digital employment policy. We work with platforms, enterprises, trade unions and civil society to create better framework conditions for a fairer digital working world.