Labour is a nation's greatest resource. Getting more people
into work increases the pace of growth and raises living
standards.
Faced with an ageing population, Japan is trying to bolster its
growth rate by attracting more women back into jobs. Greece's
growth prospects could be transformed by raising its workforce
participation rate from just 50% to Northern European rates of over
70%.
No wonder that policymakers around the world expend so much time
and effort dreaming up ways of raising workforce participation.
In the 1990s, under Chancellor Schroeder, Germany set out to
raise kick start growth with a set of reforms, including a carrot
and stick approach to getting the unemployed to find work. The
reforms contributed to a marked rise in German workforce
participation and an enviably low jobless rate.
