The FutureWORKS Collective was officially launched at an inception workshop organised by the JustJobs Network on March 6-9, 2024 in Negombo, Sri Lanka. The workshop was the first in-person convening of the five regional hubs that will form the Global South research network. The FutureWORKS Collective seeks to foster innovation that advances skills for the future of work and promote decent work globally. It will do this through Southern-led interdisciplinary research, network consolidation, and collaboration in public policy processes. This network, the FutureWORKS Collective is funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada. 
The FutureWORKS Collective was officially launched at an inception workshop organised by the JustJobs Network on March 6-9, 2024 in Negombo, Sri Lanka. The workshop was the first in-person convening of the five regional hubs that will form the Global South research network. The FutureWORKS Collective seeks to foster innovation that advances skills for the future of work and promote decent work globally. It will do this through Southern-led interdisciplinary research, network consolidation, and collaboration in public policy processes. This network, the FutureWORKS Collective is funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada.
Sri Lanka’s unemployment rate is low (4.4 percent in 2016), yet its youth (15-24 yrs) unemployment rate is 22 percent. Unemployment among the more educated (above GCE AL) is 8.3 percent, almost double the overall rate. The participation of women in the labor force is 34.
An emerging new employment opportunity Launch of World Development Report 2016 and related LIRNEasia Research Hilton Residencies 06 December 2016 Helani Galpaya, Suthaharan Perampalam & Laleema Senanayake
The leading English language weekly, The Sunday Times, has carried a report on some of LIRNEasia’s work on inclusive information societies. Based on a nationally representative survey, LIRNEasia estimates, there could be 17,000 to 22,000 freelancers in Sri Lanka registered with multiple platforms and selling their skills all around the world. Fiverr, Freelancer and Upwork are the popular platforms used by Sri Lankan youth with Fiverr having the most number of registered workers, LIRNEasia said adding that the research was undertaken to understand the enabling factors and challenges in adopting to work on online freelancing platforms. Typical freelance “jobs” that are outsourced through platforms include graphic design, data entry, proofreading, translation, copyediting, market research, programming, data verification, etc. According to the survey, 26 per cent of the Sri Lankans between the age group 16 to 40 are aware of online freelancing and among those who aware 9 per cent expressed interest in working on online freelancing jobs.
Presentation for Sarvodaya Board 30 November 2016
The University of Sri Jayewardenepura is organizing an International Conference on Humanities and the Social Sciences, 10-11 November 2016. A principal focus is taking research to policy. That was why I accepted their invitation to be the Chief Guest and to moderate the media symposium. Here is a short excerpt from what I plan to say tomorrow. Hopefully the full speech will be published.
One of the main objectives of our joint effort with the Jaffna Managers’ Forum 18-19 October was to raise the awareness of Jaffna youth about the potential of online freelancing as a gateway to the service sector and to entrepreneurship. Suthaharan Perampalam communicates the findings from our research in a Tamil weekly, read in Jaffna.
As part of the Inclusive Information Society research, we at LIRNEasia were in the process of interrogating the labor force and related data. Then there was this headline about there being no need for one million jobs when only 400,000 people were unemployed. Two days later, the op-ed refuting the absurdity of comparing one million over five years target with a static unemployment figure was published. As can be seen, having the data ready was extremely helpful for the quick response. If we are to escape from the middle-income trap and get established on a high-growth trajectory, it is imperative that all sectors of society understand the importance of creating jobs with the characteristics demanded by our young people and by the women who are sitting out the job market.
Not bad for a young industry. But I do hope the results of the survey will be disclosed quickly and with breakdowns of export and domestic earnings and employment. Last time it had to be extracted in dribs and drabs. “Sri Lanka has launched an ICT value survey to find the national hi-tech exports it achieved in 2013/14.” the minister said in a statement.
We heard, back in 2005, that the Pakistan Telecom Authority and the Nigerian Communication Commission had calculated how much direct and indirect employment had been created by the telecom industries. Further inquiries revealed that the methods used were suspect and that the studies would not float under rigorous review. The difficulties are exemplified by the prepaid card value chain, where a whole series of resellers are involved in selling value and almost none are engaged solely with mobile. Now the NYT reports an attempt by Apple to quantify its job creation within the US. Apple has made its first attempt to quantify how many American jobs can be credited to the sale of its iPads and other products, a group that includes the Apple engineers who design the devices and the drivers who deliver them — even the people who build the trucks that get them there.
The discussion has drawn the attention of some big guns on LBO. Here are the base data given me by ICTA that I used for the calculations. Table 1: IT/BPO Workforce Total BPO IT IT Industry Non-IT Ind/Govt 2010 63,000 13,000 50,000 27,000 23,000 2016 120,000 43,000 77,000 42,000 35,000 Increase 57,000 30,000 27,000 15,000 12,000 Table 2: Average Requirement Per Year IT Professional 5,400 4,500 BPO Professional 6,000 Financial and Accounting 3,500 Legal Services 1,000 Other 1,500
Starting with a low base, but 62,000 well paying jobs is a great achievement. Sri Lanka’s information and communications technology workforce has doubled in the past four years as the island ramps up training and investment to make the sector a key export industry. A new survey said the number of ICT sector jobs increased by 100 percent to over 62,000 this year from 30,120 in 2006. Over 50,000 people are estimated to have been employed in the IT sector in 2010. The national ITC workforce survey by the state-run Information and Communication Technology Agency covered 80 state institutions, 325 private sector firms, 30 BPO (business processing outsourcing) firms, and 75 IT training institutes.
More food for thought for discussions on whether the emphasis should be on agriculture, which is said to employ the most people, or on services, which has the most potential. Sri Lanka has generated 234,000 service sector jobs in the third quarter of 2009 from a year earlier, though 89,000 jobs were lost in industry, and 240,000 were lost in the farming sector, a government survey showed. The data does not include Sri Lanka’s Northern province, which had just emerged from a 30-year war. The agriculture sector shrank 0.9 percent in the quarter, with paddy production falling 28.