Trade and Employment: From Myths to facts

Trade negotiations –bilateral, regional or multilateral – routinely lead to debates on the implications for employment. There are promises of new and better jobs as well as concerns over job losses and pressure on wages and labour rights. Factual assessments of the employment and distributional impacts of trade agreements are, however, too often missing.

This edited volume tries to address this disconnect between the trade-and-employment linkages in public debates and the relative absence of factual assessments of the employment and distributional implications of trade. The publication is an outcome of a joint project of the European Commission  and the International Labour Office on “Assessing and addressing the employment effects of trade”.

This publication has three objectives: First, to fill knowledge gaps by taking stock of the existing evidence on trade and employment with a focus on work using recent methodologies and datasets and on work that pays special attention to the functioning of labour markets. Second, to contribute to the design of tools that governments, social partners and experts can use to evaluate the employment effects of trade. And third, to contribute to the design of policy mixes that promote open markets whilst at the same time promoting quality jobs with adequate levels of protection.

We are confident this publication will contribute to strengthening the evidence base for trade and employment policies. Ultimately, we hope that it will facilitate the design of new generations of coherent policies that ensure the economical and social sustainability of globalization.