GENEVA, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- The 20th International Conference of Labor Statisticians (ICLS) said Friday it has agreed to a major revision and extension of labor and decent work statistics to help create better policies on the future of work.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) said that the Oct. 10-19 conference in Geneva agreed on new job classifications that take account of new, blurred boundaries in work.
"This is going to allow better and more effective policies at the country level and will have a direct impact on well-being for many people," ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said at the closing session here.
The conference adopted a unique statistical roadmap to measure progress on United Nation's 2030 Agenda on sustainable development.
Ryder said the new classifications agreed on will now cover all forms of work and provide national statisticians with much-needed alternative ways to make visible the emerging new forms of employment.
These include dependent work, in a traditional employment relationship with one single employer, and self-employment, which is a more individualized form of work.
They also include new forms of employment such as platforms, on-demand work, crowd-work, temporary employment, and agency work.
The Conference also took a detailed look at the issue of informality and ways better provide related policy advice.
Delegates also discussed the role of domestic work and how domestic workers could be included in the proposed new classifications of work relationships.
"The Conference also addressed the role of women in the world of work by launching new tools that will support the use of the innovative statistical definitions and indicators adopted by the ICLS in 2013," said the ILO.
It also agreed to the first statistical definition of work that goes beyond the narrow definition of "employment" as work performed only for pay or profit.
The new definition includes own-use production, unpaid work, and volunteer work.
These tools will help countries apply the new concepts in their labor force surveys, creating a basis for better-informed policy decisions, said the ILO.
