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Jobs and Technology: East Asia and Pacific Economic Update, October 2024
Jobs and Technology
Explore how the East Asia and Pacific region continues to outperform the rest of the world despite challenges and how it is adapting to evolving growth dynamics, shifting patterns of trade, and technological changes.
Developing East Asia and the Pacific is growing at 4.8% in 2024, faster than the rest of the world but slower than before the pandemic. Growth in China is dampened by property market weakness and low consumer and investor confidence. Growth in the rest of the region benefits from increasing domestic consumption, recovering goods exports, and a tourism rebound.
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The Economic Update highlights four factors that are likely to affect regional growth: shifting trade and investment, slowing growth in China, increased public and private debt, and increasing global policy uncertainty.
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Regional growth is expected to slow to 4.4% in 2025. China is forecast to grow more slowly than the rest of the region, due to internal and external challenges. The likely recovery of global trade and the expected easing of global financial conditions are expected to support growth in the other countries of the region.
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East Asia and Pacific countries have successfully created stable employment for its people. But industrial robots, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital platforms are affecting labor markets in the region. On the one hand, the adoption of robots creates jobs for skilled formal workers. On the other hand, it displaces low-skilled formal workers. Policy must help equip people with the skills and mobility to take advantage of the new technologies.
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Policy Issues examined in recent economic updates
Previous updates have focused on a number of other policy issues, including:
(1) Vaccination to contain COVID-19;
(2) fiscal policy for relief, recovery, and growth;
(3) climate policy to build back better;
(4) smart containment of COVID-19, especially through non-pharmaceutical interventions like testing-tracing-isolation;
(5) smart schooling to prevent long-term losses of human capital, especially for the poor;
(6) social protection to help households smooth consumption and workers reintegrate as countries recover;
(7) support for firms to prevent bankruptcies and unemployment, without unduly inhibiting the efficient reallocation of workers and resources;
(8) financial sector policies to support relief and recovery without undermining financial stability;
(9) trade reform, especially of still-protected services sectors—finance, transport, communications—to enhance firm productivity, avert pressures to protect other sectors, and equip people to take advantage of the digital opportunities whose emergence the pandemic is accelerating;
(10) creating opportunities for firms and ensuring inclusion to promote equitable growth;
(11) policies to encourage technology diffusion and adoption; and
(12) policies to address new and old distortions in the areas of food, fuel and finance.
(13) Policies to face up to the major challenges of de-globalization, aging and climate change
(14) Policies to harness the potential of services to drive economy-wide growth and job creation
(15) Policies to support firms leverage new technologies and help spur EAP firms productivity so they can catch up with global leaders.