ILO and Partners Aim to Standardize Job Data Measurement

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) and development finance institutions are collaborating to establish common standards for measuring job creation from investment projects. Representatives from various international financial institutions and development partners convened at the ILO's International Training Centre in Turin, Italy, for the seventh Financial Institutions Symposium on Employment Impact Assessments.

The symposium, organized in partnership with the European Union through the STRENGTHEN3 project, aimed to enhance project-level data collection and ensure consistency in employment impact assessments across institutions. Mito Tsukamoto, former Chief of the ILO’s Employment in Investments Branch, emphasized the need for effective measurement methods.

Discussions included improving expenditure data to better estimate jobs generated across supply chains and the potential use of artificial intelligence for data collection. The meeting identified priorities for cooperation, including harmonizing employment-related information requests and developing common expenditure breakdowns.

The initiative aims to improve the comparability of employment assessments and will continue through the newly launched Global Employment Impact Assessment Community of Practice.