What Works for Work : Catalogue

Overview & Synopsis

Governments in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face growing pressure to create jobs amid shrinking fiscal space and weak growth prospects. Employment solutions - like active labor market programs (ALMPs), regulatory reforms, or alignment of social programs - are effective tools to address these challenges. Recent years have seen a strengthening evidence base for employment solutions, with rigorous evaluations indicating that well-crafted programs can achieve impacts that far exceed earlier interventions. This guidebook reviews those high-performing employment solutions and distills lessons on how to replicate them. It draws from more than a hundred successful programs and reforms implemented in diverse settings, showing that targeted and well-designed solutions can quickly make a difference in many different contexts. The guidebook builds on the 2025 Global Labor Market Conference (GLMC) report on making labor markets work for youth, expanding the scope to a much larger set of programs, reforms, and beneficiary groups. To help policy makers navigate these options, this guidebook presents a simple framework linking labor market challenges to specific families of interventions. Intended as an operational resource, this guidebook also provides global evidence and concrete examples to inform real-time policy decisions. It offers a structured approach to understanding where specific employment solutions and programs fit within broader jobs strategies, what results are feasible given local conditions, and how different interventions can be adapted and scaled. The guidebook is structured as follows: section 1 discusses employment constraints in LMICs. Section 2 provides an overview of proven and promising solutions, with a detailed catalogue presented in Appendix A. Section 3 offers a framework for designing impactful interventions. Section 4 concludes with considerations for scaling up these programs.