A new International Labour Organization (ILO) Social Protection Spotlight Brief highlights the essential role of unemployment protection in safeguarding income security and supporting full, productive and freely chosen employment. The brief, titled Building rights-based unemployment protection schemes, offers practical guidance for countries facing increasingly frequent and complex crises.
The COVID-19 pandemic underscored how critical unemployment protection schemes are in protecting workers who lose their jobs and earnings. Beyond cushioning income shocks, these schemes also helped sustain consumption and support economic recovery during the crisis.
The brief explains how international social security standards provide a strong foundation for designing effective, rights-based unemployment protection systems. These standards guide countries in aligning income support with employment promotion objectives.
It highlights key ILO instruments, notably the Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952 (No. 102), which sets minimum levels of protection and core governance principles, and the Employment Promotion and Protection against Unemployment Convention, 1988 (No. 168) and its accompanying Recommendation No. 176, which offers more advanced standards in this field.
Together, these standards emphasize that unemployment protection must go hand in hand with employment policies that promote decent work. The new ILO brief aims to support governments and social partners in building systems that protect incomes while accelerating transitions back into quality employment.
This new resource complements a recently published brief titled Why are unemployment individual savings accounts not an adequate and equitable solution to unemployment protection? Taken together, the two briefs reinforce the evidence that robust, rights-based unemployment protection systems grounded in social insurance are not only more cost-effective, but also essential for advancing social justice and inclusive labour markets.
