The global growth strategy we keep overlooking is care

Care quietly powers every workforce on the planet. Ignoring it is not just a moral lapse, it is an economic planning error. Work by the International labor Organization, ILO, and the University of Toronto’s Institute for Gender and the Economy shows that policy still favours physical infrastructure and productivity tools while underinvesting in the people who make productivity possible.

What we mean by care work

Care work covers the daily tasks and relationships that keep people healthy, safe, and able to participate in society. It includes direct care, such as feeding a child or helping an older adult with medication, and indirect care, such as cooking, cleaning, and other behind the scenes work that keeps households running.

Care can be paid or unpaid. Paid care includes early childhood education, health and social care, and domestic work in formal and informal settings. Unpaid care, mostly provided by women inside households, sustains families and communities yet is largely invisible in economic statistics, even though it enables the rest of the workforce to function. The wider care economy brings together the policies, services, infrastructure, finance, and norms that shape how care is provided and accessed over a lifetime.

Why care is a high return investment

ILO modelling across 82 economies finds that expanding childcare and long term care could create nearly 280 million new jobs by 2030 and about 299 million by 2035. Roughly 84 percent would be formal, and close to eight in ten would be held by women. The largest gains would come in long term care and early childhood services, with additional indirect jobs in sectors that benefit when more people can work.

The macro returns are strong. Each 1 US dollar invested in closing childcare gaps could generate about 3.76 US dollars in additional GDP by 2035, outpacing many physical infrastructure projects. The Valuing Care report estimates that devoting 2 percent of GDP to public care services would create roughly twice as many jobs as the same share in construction. It also notes that unpaid care already represents around 9 percent of global GDP, and up to 15 percent in some countries, despite being largely absent from official accounts.

For women, the effects are transformative. The global female employment rate could rise from 46.2 percent in 2019 to 56.5 percent in 2035, while the global gender wage gap could narrow from 20.1 percent to 8.0 percent. Well designed care systems unlock labor supply constrained by unpaid responsibilities and strengthen fiscal bases through higher earnings, better child development, and healthier ageing.

Why care still sits at the margins

Current systems still rely heavily on unpaid labor to fill gaps the state has not addressed. In 2023, 748 million people were outside the labor force due to care responsibilities, 708 million of them women. Demand is rising at the same time, with 2.3 billion people expected to need care by 2030. Households, rather than public budgets, continue to absorb most of the cost.

Paid care is undervalued and feminised. Women account for about 65 percent of the global care workforce, yet many jobs pay low wages, offer weak protections, and involve high physical and emotional strain. Racialised and immigrant women are concentrated in the lowest paid segments, reinforcing the idea that care is natural women’s work instead of critical economic labor.

Climate shocks, economic transitions, and demographic change widen the gap between need and provision. The ILO projects a global shortfall of around 18 million health workers by 2030, mostly in low and lower middle income countries. As services become unaffordable or break down, unpaid workloads for women rise further. Care remains essential for economic functioning but is still treated as a private burden rather than a public investment priority.

What a functioning care economy would require

Both reports argue that care must be treated as economic infrastructure. That means expanding childcare, long term care, and community based services; setting clear standards for quality and access; and building stable funding models. The 2024 ILO resolution underlines that states carry primary responsibility for provisioning, regulating, and financing care systems.

Job quality has to improve alongside coverage. The care workforce needs higher wages, safer working conditions, professional training, and stronger social protection. Investment in facilities such as childcare centres, eldercare homes, and community hubs both expands access and creates formal jobs.

Reducing unpaid care is the final pillar. The ILO calls on governments to recognise, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care through affordable services, paid parental leave, flexible work, and targeted support for low income and marginalised households. When care is treated as core economic policy rather than a household problem, gains to growth, gender equality, and resilience follow.

Why care belongs on the GLMC agenda

Care cuts across the Global Labor Market Conference, GLMC, pillars on informality, skills, crisis resilience, and job quality. Investing in care changes who can work, how they work, and how economies absorb shocks.

GLMC will bring together policymakers, employers, unions, and researchers who are testing new care models, from childcare systems and long term care reforms to portable protections and financing tools. The goal is to move care from the margins of labor market debates to the centre and to give participants approaches they can adapt in their own countries and sectors.

For anyone thinking about the future of work, the real question is no longer whether we can afford to invest in care. It is whether we can afford not to.

Citations:

International labor Organization. Employment-Intensive Investment Programme (EIIP) and Care: Guidance Note. Geneva: ILO, 2025.

Institute for Gender and the Economy. Valuing Care: Policies and Practices to Advance an Equitable and High-Quality Care Economy. Toronto: Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, 2024.