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We study transitions between different types of formal and informal employment using retrospective job histories from a new survey in Bangladesh. Workers transitioning between jobs are most likely to remain in the same type of employment, although there is still substantial churn across employment types. Private wage employees have higher probability of transitioning to a new job, and changes in earnings and benefits suggest evidence of upward mobility. Nevertheless, there is also non-trivial risk of downward mobility, especially for those transitioning into casual employment, which has the lowest level of earnings and benefits and the highest levels of exposure to workplace hazards and violence. Overall, the informal sector appears to include subpopulations consistent with both the traditional view that it is a segmented portion of the labor market with few prospects of upward mobility, and with the alternative view that it is a dynamic, entrepreneurial alternative to wage employment.

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While an information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure is a crucial ingredient of a knowledge-based economy (KBE), a skilled labor force (human capital) and a supportive institutional and business environment are equally important ingredients to facilitate the appropriate use of knowledge for an economy’s level of development to increase productivity in all its activities. While skills, education, and training are given their own importance in many countries, these factors are not given as much attention as technologies in discussions of the knowledge economy. Without sufficient human capital and the appropriate policies in place to take advantage of adopted technologies, their potential is unlikely to be realized. In this paper, [the authors] adopt a cross-country perspective to assess the progress of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries on various dimensions of a knowledge economy, using indicators and sub-indicators developed by various organizations. [The authors] find that the GCC countries have performed well in providing a physical ICT infrastructure, but need to focus more on human capital and the business environment in order to foster the balanced development of their knowledge economies.

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