All around the world, labour employment is seen as a fundamental activity for earning incomes and securing livelihoods for people and families. Economies are therefore often preoccupied with the business of creating of jobs. The objective of the study that yielded this policy brief were threefold: (a) to review the time-consistency of jobs targeting in the short-, medium-, and long-term instruments and of progress measurement in job creation; (b) to comment about the relevance, effectiveness and sustainability of targeting and tracking job creation at the macroeconomic level; and (c) to propose a solution for establishing comparability between the 2012 and 2014 Labour Force Survey datasets on the one hand and the Labour Force Survey dataset for 2017 on the other. This policy brief puts forth an empirical case for the inclusion of employment targeting and tracking into Zambia’s macroeconomic frameworks. We propose that these elements be incorporated as a permanent feature of the Annual Budget for the short-term, the Economic Stabilization and Growth Programme (ESGP) and Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) for the medium-term and the Seventh National Development Plan (7NDP) for the long-term. We also offer recommendations for CSO, towards the recovery of comparability and compatibility of the Labour Force Survey 2012 and 2014 datasets with the new 2017 dataset (which is based on a significantly revised methodology. Ultimately this policy brief offers a set of policy options and strategies for permanently including jobs targeting and tracking onto Zambia’s macroeconomic framework. This will be an integral step in fostering the creation of more, better and more sustainable jobs in Zambia.
