G20 Labour and Employment Ministers met in Ankara for the sixth time on 3-4 September 2015. The meeting was chaired by the Turkish Minister of Labour and Social Security, Mr. Ahmet Erdem.
Ministers from G20 members and guest countries as well as principals of international organizations attended the meeting.
In a special session, Ministers met with the representatives of social partners and G20 outreach groups representing business, labour, civil society, think-tanks, women and youth to get their insights on the agenda items of the meeting.
The meeting provided an excellent opportunity to discuss recent trends in the global labour market, key challenges the world has been facing and possible policy options to address these challenges.
In line with the overall priorities of Turkish G20 Presidency, which is formulated as three “i”s: Inclusiveness, Investment for growth and Implementation; the Labour and Employment Ministers of the G20 members and invited countries focused on promoting more inclusive labour markets, increasing investment on human resources, and achieving successful implementation through effective monitoring.
Ministers welcomed Turkey’s initiative on establishing a permanent website for the G20 Employment Working Group which provided easy access to previous G20 Presidencies’ documents produced in the employment track. The website can be accessed at www.g20ewg.org.
Ministers also agreed to reduce the share of young people who are most at risk of being left permanently behind in the labour market by 15% by 2025. The target group in this regard has been identified by the Ministers as low skilled or informally employed young people and the young people who are neither in employment nor in education or training (NEETs).
Following the meeting, G20 Labour and Employment Ministers adopted “Ankara Declaration” titled “Creating quality jobs for all, investing in skills and reducing inequalities to promote inclusive and robust growth”.
G20 Labour and Employment Ministers also came together with their finance colleagues at the Joint Meeting of the G20 Finance and Labour Ministers’ Meeting which was held in the afternoon of 4th September.
The discussions in the Joint Meeting were structured around two topics namely, growth-employment relationship and inequalities. At the end of the meeting, a Chair’s Statement capturing the highlights of the discussions was released by the G20 Turkish Presidency.
