A Labour Market Approach to Investing in the Health and Social Workforce to achieve the SDGs

Overview

The health labour market approach assesses bottlenecks, trends and policy questions in the market for health workers. Given its comprehensive and forward-looking approach it has become a fundamental component in effective intersectoral policy making, investment cases, health workforce planning and regional health employment and economic growth action plans.

Labour markets are changing rapidly; demographic and epidemiological shifts and technological advances have resulted in a transformation of the global labour market. With the service sector leading employment growth in most countries; the health and social sector has emerged as a major contributor to job creation. Employment growth rates in the health and social sector are often double that of overall employment growth. Investing in the health sector is a strategic opportunity for accelerating economic prosperity, youth employment, and women’s labour participation.

Timely analysis of labour market trends is fundamental to designing the effective health labour market policies needed to address the bottlenecks and meet the growing demand for health workers. In addition to workforce shortages, issues of maldistribution, unemployment, absenteeism, gender inequities and performance are prevalent in the health labour market.