May 2026

Low female employment and informality threaten Morocco’s social protection goals

Morocco’s low female labor participation, widespread informal employment, and rapidly aging population are putting growing pressure on the sustainability of pensions and social protection systems, according to a new HCP report. The study argues that extending social coverage alone will not be enough without deeper reforms aimed at expanding formal employment and increasing women’s participation in the economy. Low female participation in the labor market, the persistence of informal employment, and rapid demographic aging are putting increasing pressure on Morocco’s...

South Africa. Pay is up. So why are workers raiding pensions?

The average salary increase this year was 5.43% – comfortably above inflation. Yet those same workers are tapping pensions to buy groceries and walking out of jobs at the fastest rate since Covid. he numbers, on paper, say South African workers are doing fine. The reality says something else. The average salary increase this year was 5.43%, according to the April 2026 Remchannel Bi-Annual Salary and Wage Movements Survey. That compares with 2025’s average inflation of 3.2%. By that arithmetic, most...

Socio-economic Status of Informal Sector Business Entrepreneurs in Bangladesh

By Dr. Nazrul Islam Informal sector business is a highly growing sector of Bangladesh which is defined as the businesses that are neither taxed nor monitored by any form of government or authority . A large number of small and medium enterprises (SME) fall into this category of the informal sector of businesses. The major driving forces behind the growth of informal sector businesses in Bangladesh are the rise in household demands fir goods and services manufactured and supplied by...

The Impact of Corporate Employment: Minimum Wage or Social Insurance Policy? — Evidence from China

By Junpeng di, Wanhe li & Mingyuan zhang China's minimum wage standards and enforcement have been on the rise, and the academic community generally believes that minimum wage increases enterprise labor costs and has an important impact on employment. However, less attention has been paid to social insurance, which is also a cost for Chinese companies. This paper considers both minimum wage and social insurance policy at the same time, and firstly analyzes the influence mechanism of the two on...

Moldova. Six out of ten agricultural workers work informally and are deprived of social protection

He said about six out of ten people employed in agriculture work without official registration, without labor contracts and without social protection, being paid for temporary work such as harvesting or tending crops. “By comparison, the rate in non-agricultural sectors is six times lower – one in ten. What is informal employment? These are people who accept day jobs because they need money for bread, medicine, bills or debts at the store. More often than not, they don’t even ask...

US. For some older people, retirement today means unretiring

On weekday mornings, Myndie Friedman is out the door just as the sun rises over the Atlantic Ocean, a block from her home in Long Beach, New York. Friedman's first stop is a 7:30 a.m. bus, which she takes to a local train station for a roughly hourlong trip into Manhattan's Midtown neighborhood. Then she hops on the subway before exiting and hoofing it 10 minutes to her office job. Total commute: two hours door to desk, along with another...

April 2026

Informal Workers in Mexico: A Statistical Snapshot

By José de Jesús Luján Salazar & Joann Vanek In Mexico City and urban Mexico, women comprise 42 per cent and men 58 per cent of the labour force. In Mexico nationally, women’s share is slightly lower at 39 per cent. Between 2013 and 2019, employment in Mexico increased by more than 5 million workers but women’s share of employment did not increase significantly. The data in this brief are based on the second quarter of the 2013 and 2019 Encuesta Nacional...

The Welfare Effects of Protecting Older Workers

By Todd Morris, Stefan Staubli & Benoit Dostie We evaluate the welfare effects of five provincial mandatory retirement bans in Canada from 2005 to 2009 using linked employer-employee tax data. The bans sharply reduce retirements at age 65, with sizable announcement effects and heterogeneity across industries. Post-65 employment and earnings rise at least 14%, with gains comparable to a two-year increase in pension-eligibility ages. Older workers save more and spouses postpone retirement, benefiting public finances, with no observable effects on...

Threats of AI? Workers’ perceptions of technological change and precautionary saving behaviour

By Kun Lee, Ludivine Martin & Thuc-Uyen Nguyen-Thi Despite the extensive literature on the labour market impacts of technological change, workers’ behavioural adaptation to augmented technological risks remains relatively underexplored. In this study, we investigate workers’ perceptions of future risks posed by AI and advanced technologies and how these perceptions are causally linked with their precautionary saving behaviour. Using a novel survey of workers in Luxembourg – a country characterised by rapid technological change and dynamic labour markets – we...

Baby boomers have now ‘gobbled up’ nearly one-third of America’s wealth share, and they’re leaving Gen Z and millennials behind

Older Americans may be trading in hustling for retirement, but that hasn’t stopped them from getting richer. Baby boomers now hold a record high of the United States’ wealth, Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok noted in a December blog post, citing Federal Reserve data. Compared to 1989, when those over 70 years old held 19% of the wealth in the household sector, older Americans now own 31% of the wealth. That chunk of change is an outsize share compared to other generations....