SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
SDG 8 looks at Economic Growth and Decent Work. I have a bit of a complex relationship with this goal. Not only is it extremely long, which has made it an absolute monster to research and write, but I also find the inclusion of economic growth in the 2030 Agenda a little bit counter to the fundamental premise of sustainability - which is a state of balance and stasis, not a state of constant growth. However, I think you will find when we dive into this goal that the way economic growth is explained is very measured and nuanced. It’s not a carte blanche to consume as much as possible in the name of GDP, it’s about rethinking how we give economic opportunities to individuals without exploiting them and the planet.
SDG 8 is made up of 10 targets and 2 means of implementation. As the title demonstrates the goal covers two broad domains - economic growth and decent work but there are also a few surprises in this goal. The first 4 targets are about economic growth and productivity, the next 4 targets focus are on employment and labour rights including ending modern slavery and providing safe working conditions, and the last two targets are kind of wild cards and cover sustainable tourism and access to financial services.
Target 8.1
Sustain per capita economic growth in accordance with national circumstances and, in particular, at least 7 per cent gross domestic product growth per annum in the least developed countries
What it means
As you can see this target is focused on growth, which does cause me a little bit of discomfort. Our society’s fixation on growth is the root cause of many (or possibly all) of the social and environmental problems we currently face. Having said that, we also know that economic growth is crucial to lifting people out of poverty, so I want to focus on the creative wording of this target. Saying “economic growth in accordance with national circumstances” implies that the same level of growth is not appropriate for every country.
Now, let’s breakdown how this target is measured. Target 8.1 has only one indicator and that is “annual growth rate of real GDP per capita” (UN Stats). Real GDP per Capita measures the average level of national income per person adjusted for inflation. It gives a rough indication of average living standards (Economics Help).
Where we are currently
So, how do we gauge what is solid economic growth rate? Well, we can see that in the target, the Agenda calls for 7% growth in least developed countries but it is generally accepted that for a developed economy, an annual GDP growth rate of 2%-3% is considered normal. The world economy as a whole experienced a high annual GDP per capita growth rate of around 4% in the four years immediately preceding COVID; and the decade before that the rate was hovering around just over 2%. The pandemic has caused extreme fluctuations in GDP. 2020 was the largest fall in global GDP since the Great Depression, an almost immediate drop of 5.9%, however economic growth rebounded greatly in 2021 as the world recovered and is currently sitting around 5.8% annual growth according to the World Bank.
Even before the pandemic, the 7% GDP growth target for the least developed countries had not been reached. In fact, the actual GDP growth rate per capita was hovering around the global average at 2% in 2018 and fell to 1.5% in 2019 (source). As with all countries, COVID caused a plummeting of GDP growth rates in LDCs and they have now reached a growth rate of 4.2%, less than the global average (OECD). According to UNCTAD, only 1 of the 46 LDCs is predicted to meet the 7% growth target in 2022.
Target 8.2
Achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation, including through a focus on high-value added and labour-intensive sectors
What it means
In order to understand this target, one must understand labour productivity. Labour productivity measures the hourly output of a country's economy. Specifically, it charts the amount of GDP produced by an hour of labour. This concept can be a little confusing but generally the idea is that one hour worked can produce many different outputs. For example, one hour of work constructing a computer will produce more economic value than one hour producing a clay pot. And if you have technology, like say, machines that can produce 100 computers in an hour, you will produce significantly more economic value.
Knowing this, growth in labour productivity is dependent on three main factors: physical capital, human capital, and technology (Investopedia). Physical capital are the inputs necessary to create outputs, human capital is the level of knowledge, skill and expertise workers have, and technology is a tool that allows more work to be done with less inputs. Just think about computer processing as an example here. Doing complex mathematical models would take hundreds of hours of time manually but can be done in seconds with a computer.
I hope this makes it apparent why labour productivity growth is essential for low-income countries. We all have the same number of hours in a day so if we spend them producing things with lower economic value it stands to reason that it is harder to make the income needed to provide our basic needs.
Where we are currently
It is hard to give general trends about where we stand on labour productivity because it is so specific to each country so let me just highlight a few interesting points. First, the most productive country on the planet is Luxembourg with $107.40 GDP per hour worked (OECD), which makes sense as it is a small population with a knowledge economy mostly focused on finance. However, the actual indicator for this goal is not about the level of labour productivity, it is about about productivity growth over time. The global average labour productivity growth rate reached 1.6 % in 2018 and 1.4% in 2019. The top growing country on this indicator is Libya with over 115% growth and Bolivia and Myanmar are experiencing the lowest growth -12% and -15% respectively, but as I mentioned it is very country-specific (SDG Tracker). The only general trend I can point to is that since 2000, growth in labour productivity has been higher in lower- and upper-middle-income countries than in low- and high-income countries (Springer).
Target 8.3
Promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage the formalisation and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial services
What it means
While there is a lot wrapped up in this target, it all boils down to reducing informal employment. The informal sector is an invisible sector that is not regulated by the government. It includes all jobs in unregistered and/or small-scale private unincorporated enterprises that produce goods or services meant for sale or barter for example self-employed street vendors, taxi drivers and home-base workers (Springer).
According to the ILO, workers who are informally employed frequently lack access to social protection, income security and basic rights at work, and this undermines job transitions and entrepreneurship. A low informality rate in a country is a reflection of effective and inclusive institutions that benefit the whole of society, and which are essential to promote innovation and creativity. This target is measured by the proportion of informal employment in non‑agriculture employment, by sex (SDG Tracker).
Where we are currently
Progress in reducing informality is poor, and informal employment continues to be the reality for around 61% of workers worldwide. This means that 2 billion people worldwide worked in jobs that lack basic protection. The share is much higher in LDCs, where the proportion of informal employment was 88.7 per cent in 2019. Globally, the share of informal employment was 90.7 per cent in the agriculture sector, compared with 48.9 per cent in the non-agricultural sector (UN Stats).
There is a gendered dimension here as well. In developing countries, 75% of women are in the informal economy, where they are less likely to have employment contracts, legal rights or social protection, and are often not paid enough to escape poverty. 600 million women in developing countries are in the most insecure and precarious forms of work (Springer).
Target 8.4
Improve progressively, through 2030, global resource efficiency in consumption and production and endeavour to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation, in accordance with the 10-year framework of programmes on sustainable consumption and production, with developed countries taking the lead
What it means
Now we’re talking! This is the nuance around economic growth that I was referring to at the top of the video. Let’s dig into decoupling.
Decoupling happens where there is a negative correlation between GDP growth and material footprint. This means that when growth is experienced, material footprint should decrease or at least remain the same. This has never happened at a global level (Springer) but has been seen to a degree in 32 countries who were able to decouple their growth from carbon emissions (The Breakthrough). I want to make sure it is clear that this decoupling is only emissions, not all material footprint. In all my research I could not find an example of full material decoupling. Some critics believe that decoupling is a delusion that allows for propagation of the use of GDP as an inappropriate measure of wellbeing (The Conversation) and I can totally see that argument but for me it’s better than just unchecked growth, which is what we have right now.
This target is measured by two indicators. The first is material footprint, material footprint per capita and material footprint per unit of GDP. Material footprint is defined as the total amount of raw material required for the production of a product or service. In other words, it is the total amount of natural resources demanded to sustain activities of our economic and social systems (Springer). The second indicator is Domestic material consumption, domestic material consumption per capita, and domestic material consumption per unit of GDP, which is very similar to the first but is focused on materials used in a national economy, either imported or exported.
Where we are currently
I think it will be little surprise how we are performing on this target. Recent indicators show an alarming upward trend in consumption per capita at the global level. If we look at it per unit of GDP instead, a flattening can be observed from 2011 onwards, but actual consumption is not decreasing. The rising trend of consumption per capita is driven mainly by strong increases in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, but of course we know that those in developed countries are the biggest culprits of overconsumption (ILO).
An average person living in high-income countries maintains a material footprint consumption of 60% more than people living in upper-middle-income countries and over 13 times the level of low-income countries (UN Stats).
Target 8.5
By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value
What it means
I think this one is pretty straightforward but to fully understand this target we simply need to look at the words - full and productive. Full means having employment or not being unemployed, and productive means equal pay for work of equal value. The indicators for this target correspond to these concepts. The first indicator looks at wage gaps by measuring average hourly earnings of female and male employees, by occupation, age and persons with disabilities. The second indicator measures the unemployment rate, by sex, age and disability status.
Where we are currently
Women globally are paid on average 19-22 per cent less than men. The largest gender pay gaps are usually found at the top and the bottom of the wage distribution : the ‘glass ceiling’ for highly skilled women workers and the ‘sticky floor’ for women working in the lowest paid jobs. It’s important to remember that we cannot treat women as one homogenous group. For example, there is a gap between mothers and non-mothers, known as the “motherhood pay gap” ranges from 1-30 per cent. While the gender pay gap is slowly narrowing, at the current rate of progress it will take more than 70 years to close it completely. (WEPS)
The disability pay gap in the period 1997-2014 was 13% for men and 7% for women. (Equality and Human Rights Commission)
Unemployment rates are higher for women than for men in most countries. Also, young people aged 15–24 years experience a higher unemployment rate than the rest of the working-age population. (ILO)
In 2020 and thanks to COVID, the global unemployment rate reached 6.5 per cent, up 1.1 percentage points from the previous year. The number of people unemployed worldwide increased by 33 million, reaching 220 million, and another 81 million people left the labour market altogether. (UN Stats)
Youth and women were especially hard hit, with employment losses of 8.7 per cent and 5.0 per cent, respectively, in 2020, compared with 3.7 per cent for adults and 3.9 per cent for men. Not to mention that before the pandemic, the unemployment rate of youth was already three times that of adults. (UN Stats)
Disabled people also have a disproportionate unemployment rate. The overall employment rate for disabled people was about 35% in 2014 whereas it was around 63% for men and 57% for women among non-disabled people . (Equality and Human Rights Commission)
Target 8.6
By 2020, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training
What it means
This target largely builds on the last one, focusing specifically on youth employment and opportunities. The acronym given to this concept is NEET - not in employment, education or training - and being in this state means young people are not gaining skills needed in the labour market, which reduces future chances of finding employment. In the long run, this both increases social exclusion of young people and undermines the ability of an economy to grow over a sustained period (ILO).
Where we are currently
At a global level, the youth NEET rate decreased by a mere 2 percentage points between 2005 and 2018. In 2018, more than one in five (21%) of young people worldwide were NEET (ILO).
The pandemic also led to an increase in youth NEET. In 2019, this figure was 22.3%. Quarterly figures indicate that the NEET rate worsened from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the second quarter of 2020 in 42 out of 49 countries with available data, which is not surprising, as young workers were more severely affected than older workers by employment losses in 2020. In addition Both technical and vocational education and on-the-job training suffered massive disruption, forcing many to quit their studies (UN Stats).
There is also a gendered dimension to NEET. Worldwide, young women are twice as likely as young men to be jobless and not engaged in education or training. In 2019, the global NEET rate was 31.1 percent for young women, compared with 14.0 percent for young men (UN Stats). The gender gap is especially wide in lower-middle-income countries, where young women are more than three times as likely as young men to have NEET status (ILO).
Target 8.7
Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms
What it means
There is a lot wrapped up in this particular target but ultimately it is measured only by looking at instances of child labour. However, for the purposes of this video I do want to give quick definitions on each of the concepts within this target.
The concepts of forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking are closely linked but do have slight differences.
According to the ILO, forced labour is work that is performed involuntarily and under the menace of any penalty. It refers to situations in which people are coerced to work through the use of violence or intimidation, or by more subtle means such as manipulated debt, retention of identity papers or threats of denunciation to immigration authorities.
Modern slavery is the severe exploitation of other people for personal or commercial gain and is generally considered to be made up of both forced labour and forced marriage.
Human trafficking is the use of violence, threats or coercion to transport, recruit or harbour people in order to exploit them for purposes such as forced prostitution, labour, criminality, marriage or organ removal (Antislavery.org).
Child labour is work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development. Specifically, it is work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and/or interferes with their schooling. So it is not an after school job to make extra pocket money, it is specifically exploitative work (ILO). Global data demonstrates that most child labor takes place in family settings such as on family farms or in family enterprises. Child labor outside of the family setting is, in fact, the exception rather than the rule (Springer).
Where we are currently
According to the latest ILO global estimates, about 152 million children worldwide – 64 million girls and 88 million boys - are child labourers, accounting for almost 10 percent of the child population. 73 million of these children work in hazardous conditions.
Great strides have been made in reducing child labour worldwide. The overall number of child labourers decreased by approximately 94 million between 2000 and 2016. However, progress has slowed down in recent years (ILO). In addition progress is not uniform and regional discrepancies abound in child labor decline rates. In fact, sub-Saharan Africa experienced a 1% increase in child labor prevalence rates between 2012 and 2016 (Springer).
And while it is not part of the official indicator, I did want to include the latest statistics on modern slavery as well. In 2021, 49.6 million people were living in modern slavery, of which 27.6 million were in forced labour and 22 million in forced marriage (ILO).
Target 8.8
Protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment
What it means
This target looks at labour rights, specifically the right to collective bargaining, and workplace safety. It is measured by two indicators. The first is fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 workers, by sex and migrant status. The second is the level of national compliance with labour rights (freedom of association and collective bargaining) based on International Labour Organization (ILO) textual sources and national legislation, by sex and migrant status. Freedom of association and collective bargaining or FACB are rights that are considered ‘enabling rights’, meaning that protecting and upholding them is necessary to promote and realize other rights at work (UN Stats).
Where we are currently
For the first indicator, there are serious gaps in data coverage so most of the data we have was collected by the EU. Overall, the median rate of fatal occupational injuries was 5.7 per 100,000 workers based on available data for 77 countries since 2010. Disaggregation by sex shows that the risk is greater for men than for women, which reflects men’s greater likelihood of working in hazardous industries. Some countries outside the European Union (EU) have a rate of fatal occupational injuries among male workers that exceeds 10 per 100,000 workers. The median rate of non-fatal occupational injuries is 1,128 per 100,000 workers. There is a disparity between workers with migrant and non-migrant status (ILO).
For the second indicator, there are also gaps but we do have data on how many countries have ratified important ILO texts. Since the adoption of the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention in 1948 (No. 87), and the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention in 1949 (No. 98), a growing number of ILO member States have ratified these two instruments. At the time of recording, the two Conventions had secured 155 and 166 ratifications respectively (ILO).
Target 8.9
By 2030, devise and implement policies to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products
What it means
Tourism is an important economic engine and employing industry in many countries, including countries with few other industries or natural resources. Tourism employs one in ten people worldwide (Economic Times). Pre-pandemic, tourism worldwide was on the increase, particularly in developing and transition economies. The pandemic caused a massive drop in tourism, which was a 74% decline and an estimated loss of $1.3 trillion. This affected all regions, with over a hundred million of livelihoods and millions of businesses put at risk . The impact was especially pronounced in small island developing States (SIDS), since they are more reliant than other countries on tourism as a source of income and employment (UN Stats).
Where we are currently
This target is measured by one indicator Tourism direct GDP as a proportion of total GDP and in growth rate. In the decade before the pandemic, the GDP generated by international tourism increased at a higher rate than the rest of the economy, representing 4.1% of global GDP in 2019 (UN Stats).
Over the last 20 years, the number of arrivals in international tourism doubled. Arrivals in developing economies increased on average by 5.5 per cent and in transition economies by 6.9 per cent each year, as compared to 2.6 per cent in developed economies (UNCTAD).
Target 8.10
Strengthen the capacity of domestic financial institutions to encourage and expand access to banking, insurance and financial services for all
What it means
Target 8.10 calls for all citizens to have improved access to banking, insurance and financial services, which can be achieved by strengthening the capacity of domestic financial institutions. 1.7 billion people worldwide are unbanked, with 980 million of those people being women (The Borgen Project) Investment in digital infrastructure can help rural workers (especially women, who face additional constraints) to enjoy the benefits of mobile banking and obtain much-needed credit and insurance (ILO).
This target is measured by the number of commercial bank branches and automated teller machines (ATMs) per 100,000 adults and the proportion of adults aged 15 years and older with an account at a bank or other financial institution or with a mobile-money-service provider.
Where we are currently
Despite the huge challenge, there is positive news on this target. Access to finance is on the rise globally, but the mode of access is changing thanks to technology. From 2010 to 2017, the number of automated teller machines (ATMs) per 100,000 adults grew by close to 50 percent from 45 to 66 globally, and from 2.3 to 5.8 in the least developed countries. The number of commercial bank branches per 100,000 adults grew by only 2 percent between 2010 and 2017, with more customers using digital banking solutions (UN Stats).
Means of Implementation
8A - Increase Aid for Trade support for developing countries, in particular least developed countries, including through the Enhanced Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least Developed Countries
8B - By 2020, develop and operationalize a global strategy for youth employment and implement the Global Jobs Pact of the International Labor Organization
Keep Learning
Here are a few great resources for further reading and learning:
Goal 8 Overview (2022, United Nations)
SDG Tracker (2022, Our World in Data)
UNCTAD Stats (2022, UNCTAD)
International Labour Organization (2022, ILO)