Three research colleagues of the Institute for Labor Studies (ILS) participated in a summer school course on labor market analysis in Turin, Italy, on August 3-7, 2015, with other public policy and academic professionals from different countries.

Paulina Kim Pacete, Carl Rookie Daquio and Ivan Cassidy studied Macroeconomics and Modelling for Labor Market Analysis at the International Training Center (ITC) of the International Labour Organization (ILO) as part of ILS efforts to build the capacities of its staff, particularly in using macroeconomic modelling methods in the analysis of labor market performances.

Jointly organized by the ILO-ITC Programme for Employment Policy and Analysis and the ILO Research Department, the short course served as a platform for discussions, debates and knowledge-sharing on the emerging developments in macroeconomic analyses of labor market performances. Nearly 20 participants attended it, mostly coming from developing countries.

The course design consisted of lectures and group workshops, culminating in group presentations on issues around international unemployment benefit systems as final outputs. Experts from ILO-Geneva, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and the World Bank served as resource persons.

Pacete, Daquio and Villena also participated in a panel session on tackling the global job crisis, in which leading authorities talked about the origins and consequences of the crisis and the potential solutions to it.

The one-week training took place as the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) updated the Philippine Employment Projections Model (PEPM) for 2015, an ILS-led initiative to forecast employment creation in various industries, which will serve as a basis in the formulation of the Philippine Development Plan for the next medium term.