STRENGTHEN Publication Series

Assessing the Effects of Trade on Employment: an Assessment Toolkit

International trade is still an important feature of the contemporary global economy, and governments still need to consider how trade can help or hurt their efforts to cater for the needs of their citizens. This assessment toolkit has been produced for policymakers, technical advisors, researchers and all others who work on the nexus between trade and labour markets. The modules of this toolkit and the accompanying Excel file constitute a practical approach to answering the question: “How many jobs are expected to be created or destroyed as a result of a given trade policy?” The methods in this toolkit were developed to be as intuitive, simple and low-cost as possible so that any interested person with a computer, an ability to use spreadsheets and internet access to freely-available data could perform an analysis of the anticipated effects of a given trade policy on employment. This assessment toolkit was produced as part of the project called “Strengthening the Impact on Employment of Sectoral and Trade Policies” (STRENGTHEN), which is being implemented by the International Labour Office with financial support from the European Union.