Why did trade with the United States prolong Spanish colonial rule during the Venezuelan independence struggles? From 1790 to 1815, much of the Atlantic World was roiled by European imperial wars. While the citizens of the United States profited from the waste of blood and treasure, Spanish American colonists struggled to preserve their prosperity on an imperial periphery. Along the Caribbean coast of South America, colonial elites and officials fought to secure Venezuela from threats of foreign invasion, slave rebellion, and revolution. For these elites, trading with the United States and other neutral nations was not a way to subvert colonial rule but to safeguard the prosperity and happiness of loyal subjects of the Spanish Crown. Food insecurity, deprivation, and political uncertainty left Venezuela vulnerable to revolution, however. In Sustaining Empire, Edward P. Pompeian lets readers see liberal free trade just as colonial Venezuelans did. From the vantage point of the slave-holding elite to which revolutionary figures like Simon Bolivar belonged, neutral commerce was a valuable and effectual way to conserve the colonial status quo. But after Spain's crisis of sovereignty in 1808, it proved an impediment to Venezuelan independence. Analyzing the diplomatic and economic linkages between the new US republic and revolutionary Latin American governments, Pompeian reminds us that the United States did not, and does not, exist in a vacuum, and that the historic relationships between nations mattered then and matters now. Examining an overlooked region, Pompeian offers a novel interpretation of early United States relations with Latin America, showing how US merchants executed government contracts and established flour, tobacco, and slave trading monopolies that facilitated the maintenance of colonial rule and the Spanish Empire. Trading with the United States, Pompeian argues, kept both colony and empire under a tenuous hold despite revolutionary circumstances. A fascinating revisionist history, Sustaining Empire challenges long-standing assertions that this commerce served primarily as a vector for the one-way transmission of revolutionary, liberal ideas from the North to South Atlantic.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution revolves around cyber-physical systems and artificial intelligence. Little is certain about this new wave of innovation, which leaves industrialists and educators in the lurch without much guidance on adapting to this new digital landscape. Society must become more agile and place a higher emphasis on lifelong learning to master new technologies in order to stay ahead of the changes and overcome challenges to become more globally competitive. Promoting Inclusive Growth in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a collection of innovative research that focuses on the role of formal education in preparing students for uncertain futures and for societies that are changing at great speed in terms of their abilities to drive job creation, economic growth, and prosperity for millions in the future. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics including economics, higher education, and safety and regulation, this book is ideally designed for teachers, managers, entrepreneurs, economists, policymakers, academicians, researchers, students, and professionals in the fields of human resources, organizational design, learning design, information technology, and e-learning.

A better policy framework for preventing, managing, and helping people recover from crises is crucial to lifting long-term growth and livelihoods in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The need for this policy framework has never been more urgent as the region faces the monumental task of recovery from the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. Whether specific policy responses will deliver the expected growth dividends will depend on the underlying vision of how labor markets adjust to crises and the quality of the policies enacted. This report estimates how crises change labor market flows, assesses how these changes affect people, and discusses the key policy responses. The key findings are threefold. First, crises have significant impacts on employment dynamics and structure in Latin America. Different labor market dynamics hide behind similar reductions in labor demand. Crises increase unemployment. This is the principal margin of adjustment despite highly informal labor markets. Across the region, the biggest employment losses are in the formal sector, driven by a reduction in job-finding rates rather than higher job-loss rates. Adjustment through reduction in hours worked does not seem to be an important factor in most countries' formal or informal sectors. Crises do not just shape worker flows temporarily-they have significant after-crisis effects on the structure of employment that last for several years. These effects are such that good job opportunities are gradually shrinking. Whereas in some countries the whole economy shrinks, in others informality serves as a partial buffer. Second, crises leave scars. Some workers recover from displacement and other livelihood shocks, while others are permanently scarred. For lower-skilled workers, earnings losses are persistent. Workers with higher education suffer no impacts of the crisis on their wages and very short-lived impacts on their employment. The responses are similar across male and female workers and workers with high and low previous participation in the formal labor market. New entrants to the labor market during a crisis face a worse career start - one from which it is difficult to recover. Yet, crises also bring efficiency gains, as detailed in this report. This study finds that both the structure of product markets and the conditions in local labor markets matter for the severity of crisis-induced employment and earnings losses across localities and sectors. Workers in more protected sectors that enjoy rents are sheltered from adjustment, while workers in localities with more informality cope better. This suggests the need for integrated responses at the worker, sector, and locality levels. Third, this study considers how the region's policy frameworks can more effectively respond to crises-mitigating scarring, speeding adjustment, and promoting long-term growth. It proposes a three-pronged strategy, including (i) creating a more stable macroeconomic environment at the aggregate level to smooth the impacts of crises, including "automatic stabilizers" such as countercyclical, publicly-financed income support that is lacking in LAC; (ii) increasing the capacity of social protection and labor policies to provide income support as well prepare workers for change through reemployment assistance; and (iii) tackling structural issues, including addressing product market competition, contestability issues, and the spatial dimension behind poor labor market adjustment.

The Handbook of U.S. Labor Statistics is recognized as an authoritative resource on the U.S. labor force. It continues and enhances the Bureau of Labor Statistics's (BLS) discontinued publication, Labor Statistics. It allows the user to understand recent developments as well as to compare today's economy with past history. This edition examines the impact that COVID-19 had on the labor market throughout 2020. Specifically, it discusses the sharp decline in employment, the rise of telework, and information on how Americans used their stimulus payments. In addition, this edition includes a completely updated chapter on prices and inflation. The Handbook is a comprehensive reference providing an abundance of data on a variety of topics including: Employment and unemployment; Earnings; Prices; Productivity; Consumer expenditures; Occupational safety and health; Union membership; Working poor Recent trends in the labor force And much more! Features of the publication In addition to over 215 tables that present practical data, the Handbook provides: Introductory material for each chapter that contains highlights of salient data and figures that call attention to noteworthy trends in the data Notes and definitions, which contain concise descriptions of the data sources, concepts, definitions, and methodology from which the data are derived References to more comprehensive reports which provide additional data and more extensive descriptions of estimation methods, sampling, and reliability measures

Unemployment and underemployment are global development challenges. The situation in Ghana is no different. In 2016, it was projected that, given the growing youth population, 300,000 new jobs would need to be created each year to absorb the increasing numbers of unemployed young people. Yet the structure of the Ghanaian economy in terms of employment has not changed much from several decades ago. Most jobs are low skill, requiring limited cognitive or technology know-how, reflected by low earnings and less decent work. An additional challenge for Ghana is the need to create access to an adequate number of high-quality, productive jobs.This report seeks to increase knowledge about Ghana's job landscape and youth employment programs to assist policy makers and key stakeholders to identify ways to improve the programming and effectiveness of youth employment programs and to strengthen coordination among major stakeholders.Focused, strategic, short-to-medium and long-term responses are required to address the current unemployment and underemployment challenges. Effective coordination and synergies among youth employment programs are needed to avoid duplication of efforts while transformation of the country's economic structure is improved. Effective private sector participation in skills development and employment programs is suggested. The report posits interventions in five priority areas, which are not new but could potentially be impactful through scaling up. These areas include: (1) agriculture and agribusiness promotion; (2) apprenticeship (skills training); (3) entrepreneurship promotion; (4) high-yielding areas (renewable energy-solar, construction, tourism, sports, and green jobs); and (5) pre-employment support servicesFinally, with the fast-changing nature of work due to technology and artificial intelligence, Ghana needs to develop an education and training system that is versatile and helps young people to adapt and thrive in the 21st century world of work.