Development reaches people through jobs. Economic growth transforms societies. But it is through increases in labor income from jobs that people reap these gains. Yet the limited availability of quality jobs remains the most pressing economic problem in developing countries. This report applies a jobs-focused approach to development, which puts the creation of more productive and better-paying jobs at the center of country growth strategies. To support the approach, it presents an empirically grounded conceptual and operational framework built on new global, regional, country, and subnational data from over three decades that reveal how patterns of jobs and production vary across different stages of the development process. It aims to help practitioners prioritize country-specific policy areas around three pillars: production, people, and places. The report's main aim is operational.

It makes three contributions to the debate on how jobs can be integrated in development projects and programs, by: 1) helping focus country diagnostics on the creation of more productive and better-paying jobs with economic growth; 2) providing new knowledge from global and in-country patterns of employment as countries develop; and 3) offering practitioners guidance on how to improve the design and monitoring of programs and projects to maximize their impact on jobs.