This document summarizes a literature review on the labor market impacts of value chain development interventions. It finds that such interventions often create jobs, especially in farming, fishing, processing and retail, but details are often lacking. Training and upgrading interventions contributed to job creation. Standards sometimes improved job quality and rights but globalization also led to exclusion and decreased wages. The review recommends using impact logics and counterfactuals to better evaluate these interventions and create clear, measurable indicators to assess their labor market effects.

1. Literature review on the labour
market impacts of value chain
development interventions
September 2014
Dr. Verina Ingram, Elsje Oosterkamp
LEI, Wageningen UR www.

2. Why
 ILO commissioned a systematic
literature review of the qualitative and
quantitative impacts on the labour
market of value chain development
interventions.
 Part of ILO’s ‘The Lab’ Market systems
development for decent work - 3 year
research and knowledge-generation project
pioneering innovative ways to measure and
maximise job improvements to facilitate
pro-poor change in value chains and
sectors.

3.  to distil the results of studies to answer the question of
what are the outcomes of value chain interventions
covering the quantity and quality of jobs created.
Methods
 Search of literature via
● websites
● digital libraries
● bibliographic scientific databases
● publically available databases
Aims

4. selected based on quality criteria
and when included information on
both value chain interventions and
impacts on job quality and/or
quantity.
Methodology

5. Quality of studies reviewed &
implications
 Preferably peer reviewed or independent evaluations
 Documenting interventions chain and > 1 segment chain
 Describe baseline
 Provide outcome and/or impact descriptions + indicators.
 Use clear, rigorous impact assessment methods and
documented chain intervention.
 22% peer reviewed
 8% had counterfactual
 28% classified as legitimate
 Indicators generally lacking

6. Results concerning job quantity
What are the labour market outcomes of value chain
interventions covering the quantity of jobs created?
 Jobs created- but often details not given
 Created due company & government to interventions and NGOs,
CSOs, international & certification organisations
 30% reported manual jobs created, 30% on semiskilled jobs, 9%
skilled.
 Most in farming, fisheries, processing & retail
 Interventions also result in job losses
 Approaches: Moroccan export consortiums, Ethiopian multi agency
flower market, national competitive cost advantages in labour-
intensive manufacturing sectors e.g. garments in Africa, local
government leadership South African tourism
0
10
20
30
Numberof
interventions
Impact of value chain interventions on job
quantity

7. Lessons concerning
job quantity
 Interventions to improve market infrastructure have led to large
number of jobs being created
Training and upgrading interventions have contributed to job creation
 Beware of temporary job creation from large scale interventions
 Chain interventions are embedded in a sectoral approach
 Facilitators play an important role in scaling up the number of jobs
 Adverse impacts from interventions should be expected
 A through market analysis helps design interventions that create
large numbers of jobs
 Combined government support and private sector investment in
growth markets have created jobs

8. Results concerning job quality
50% studies presented evidence on job
quality
Training empowerment, job quality,
working conditions, and skills
Standards raised job quality and
rights
Certification workers’ rights and
working conditions
Globalisation exclusion, decreased
wages

9. Results concerning job quality
 NGOs, int’l organisations and governments support for
monitoring and enforcement (i.e. garment and cocoa
chains).
 Governments and int’l organisations focused on
increased skills and training for empowerment and/or
entry to chains with resulting job quality impacts.
 Governments focused on increasing wages via joint
interventions with private sector & policy, legal,
infrastructure and/or financial (such as tax incentives,
land and grants) enabling environment
 NGOs and CSOs focused project interventions (not
specifically on labour market e.g. food and nutritional
security, gender relations, sustainable food production
but with positive side effects

10. Lessons concerning job
quality
 Training is a common intervention resulting in job quality
improvements
 Certification standards enhanced job quality over a
longer term
 Job quality isn’t always the main focus of certification –
but has been an often observed impact
 Upgrading interventions need to be integrated along the
chain
 Interventions can be provoke exclusion in labour
markets

11. Results concerning intervention
characteristics and indicators
 22% studies concerned direct interventions in a chain on
labour market aspects.
 Multiple intervening partners are common
 Many interventions have different “owners” (those who
initiated and or financed the intervention) dominated by
companies, governments and development organisations
 focus on global chains originating in developing countries
and local chains in developing countries.
 Only 15% provided a quantitative indication of the
number of jobs, certification studies were most explicit
about indicators


12.  Market/chain analysis of opportunities and risks, with integrated, sectoral
perspective to consider spillover impacts
 Make conscious choices (and recognise trade-offs) about inclusion in a programme
and acknowledge risks of exclusion.
 Engaging (local) private sector investors in interventions appears a success factor
for permanent jobs.
 Interventions to improve market infrastructure appear to create and sustain jobs.
 Interventions using/creating partnerships with governments (national and local) &
private sector appear successful in job creation & improving working conditions.
 Certification standards methods of setting clear, auditable, measurable standards,
appears to enhance job quality along chains.
 Training interventions should be clearly linked to chain upgrading ambitions and
downstream requirements in a chain.
Recommendations
Lessons from the literature for The Lab

13. Recommendations
for monitoring and evaluation in action research
in value chain development projects
Document baselines to measure impacts of chain interventions.
use impact logics.
consider using a counterfactual situation.
timing of impact assessment is critical.
assess (positive or negative) spillovers (the induced employment effect) of interventions
make explicit (external and internal) factors positively or negatively, direct or indirectly,
affect labour market outcomes prior to intervention
Develop SMARTI indicators to measures of labour market impacts
project the type and quantity of jobs expected to be created as result of the intervention
monitor key, selected impacts all along the chain