National Employment Strategy (NES) 2021 - 2025.

The National Employment Strategy (NES) 2021–2025 is a comprehensive five-year framework developed in response to government directives and national priorities in Palestine. It aims to expand employment opportunities, stimulate economic activity, and address imbalances between labour supply and demand, to enable young people to work and live with dignity. The Strategy serves as a unified reference for employment policies, guiding national efforts in both economic and social development. It establishes an integrated framework built around employment creation and decent work, to be implemented through active labour market programmes (ALMPs) and complementary cross-cutting measures. By strengthening coordination among the government and partners, the NES aligns ongoing initiatives within a coherent vision. Overall, it provides the structure through which the government and its partners can achieve employment and decent work objectives while contributing to broader socioeconomic development.
The NES seeks to achieve full, productive, and freely chosen employment, especially for youth and women, through the following 3 interrelated objectives (1) strengthening labour market governance and active labour market policies (ALMPs), which focus on improving institutional effectiveness and coordination to better align labour supply and demand. It will be achieved by building institutional capacity for employment policymaking, enhancing public employment services, expanding labour-intensive programmes targeting unemployment (especially in vulnerable areas), strengthening labour inspection systems to promote decent work and reduce informality, encouraging transition to the formal economy, promoting social dialogue, and integrating employment services with social protection systems, including rebuilding social security; (2) improving alignment of education and higher education with labour market needs, aiming to ensure that education and training systems respond effectively to labour market demands. Strategies include reforming and expanding Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in partnership with the private sector, increasing enrolment - particularly among women - integrating TVET into general education, and promoting continuing education and life skills development to enhance youth employability in both the short and long term; (3) strengthening private sector resilience, productivity, and job creation capacity, emphasizing the central role of the private sector in generating employment. It will be pursued by improving the legal and regulatory environment to facilitate business and investment, supporting entrepreneurship, self-employment, and innovation (especially among youth), enhancing access to finance and business services, strengthening the capacity and competitiveness of enterprises (including in vulnerable regions), promoting export growth and import substitution, and improving market regulation to ensure fair competition and consumer protection, ultimately increasing decent job opportunities and reducing unemployment.