Labour mobility

1
Labour mobility
Agenda item 7

• Discussant remarks on ECE/CES/GE.23/2009/14
• WTO

2
Labour mobility

• The issue
• Globalisation has brought greater cross-border
  labour mobility and trade in international
  services
• Can we measure these two well? Can we distinguish
  between them?
• Trade in services personally delivered (mode 4)
  is different from temporary mobile labour by type
  of contract

3
Labour mobility

• No indication of the size of the problem
• Figures by
• Whole world
• Major economies
• Developing economies
• Is the issue missing figures or non-identifiable
  figures?
• How does it affect key NA and BPM measures
  trade in services vis a vis income from
  employment how much does this matter?

4
Labour mobility

• Background
• Labour mobility - lt 3 months temporary
• 3 12 months short-term
• gt 12 months long-term
• Mode 4 services employed / self-employed
• Why is the split of interest? Clear statement on
  why it matters to the implementation of GATT

5
Labour mobility

• International standards
• MSITS is being revised to be in line with SNA
  2008 and BPM 6
• RSIM Rev 1 Stats on International migration also
  in line
• So no great problems with standards as such

6
Labour mobility

• Measurement problems
• It is difficult to distinguish between short-term
  employment and service (personal delivery)
• Late in the paper, we discover
• for GATS, need to know which of the
  international services are delivered personally
  (mode 4)

7
Labour mobility

• Measurement problems
• Proposals on what to do in practice missing
• Future work further papers

8
Labour mobility

• Questions and issues
• Should we have a common terminology?
• Yes. (But which one? Use NA / BPM derived ones
• Further guidelines? Yes for users
• Further research? Yes if it leads to a good
  proposal for more data

9
Labour mobility

• Modifications to primary data?
• Only if the case is strong.
• Framework research?
• Yes satellite accounts is an excellent way to
  develop new measures and allow proposals to enter
  main stream to emerge.