World Bank Group

Junior Professional Officer Program (JPO) Chiffre Nr. 2025-2-49 

GENERAL INFORMATION 

Title: Junior Professional Officer 

Agency: World Bank Group 

Division/VPU: Social Protection & Labor Global Engagement (HSPGE)/ People Vice Presidency (GGHVP)

Country and Duty Station: Washington DC, USA

Duration: 2 years with possibility of extension for another year. The extension of appointment is subject to yearly review concerning priorities, availability of funds, and satisfactory performance. 

Please note that for participants of the JPO-Programme three years work experience are mandatory when applying for the World Bank. Relevant work experience can be counted. In order to assess the eligibility of the candidates, we review the relevant experience acquired after obtaining the first university degree (usually bachelor’s degree).  

BACKGROUND 

Europe and Central Asia Region: The Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region of the World Bank is highly diverse, with countries of all income levels and wide differences in resource endowments, human capital, and institutional capacity. ECA has a strong lending pipeline as well as a large and growing portfolio of Reimbursable Advisory Services. Knowledge is critical to the Bank’s value proposition to client countries in the ECA region in both lending and advisory services. 

Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice: The Social Protection and Jobs (SPJ) Global Practice is one of 16 Global Practices (GPs) in the World Bank. The World Bank is the largest provider of development finance and solutions for social protection and jobs, working with high-income, middle-income, and low-income countries to develop country-tailored solutions for specific social protection and jobs challenges. These range from increasing the efficiency and effectiveness with which public resources toward social programs are spent (via sound policy reforms and programs in relation to social assistance, social insurance, social services, and integrated social protection systems), to improving employment outcomes through labor market policy reforms and programs, often targeted at the poor and vulnerable, or youth. 

ECA SPJ: The SPJ GP has an exciting, innovative, and growing portfolio in ECA.  The ECA SPJ unit’s work is centered around three main themes: i) building well-composed, well-performing social protection systems; ii) promoting employability and jobs; and iii) adapting to demographic change. In addition, the ECA SPJ unit takes forward cross-cutting work on service delivery, support to refugee populations and host communities, and social investment and governance.  

Climate change is a pressing issue for ECA countries, with growing demands for social protection systems to respond to the emerging risks, challenges, and opportunities. Climate-induced disasters are increasing in scope, frequency, and severity across ECA, even as countries move forward with policies to reduce carbon emissions. While social protection systems in ECA are well developed, many are not designed to rapidly response to extreme climate events, drawing attention to the need to enable these to become more adaptive. In parallel, there is a growing demand for social protection systems and labor programs to provide support to workers and communities in a way that will support a just transition across the economy, most immediately as countries look to move away from coal. Finally, recent surges in energy prices in ECA have renewed attention to energy reform, including establishing robust programs for energy vulnerable consumers, as a core aspect of social protection systems within the region. ECA SPJ is seeking a Junior Professional Officer to strengthen its response to these issues.  

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES  

ECA SPJ is seeking a Junior Professional Officer who will actively support the Unit to respond to the pressing need to respond to climate change through social protection systems in the Region. The position will contribute to the delivery of lending operations, technical assistance, analytical work and partnership activities, working under the guidance of task team leaders (TTLs) and in association with other development partners, as relevant.  The selected candidate would be a core member of the SPJ GP. The work program is anticipated to involve work across a range of countries based on need and interest. The selected candidate will work closely with staff and consultants based in Washington, DC, Vienna, Austria, and other location, and is expected to collaborate with other colleagues across Global Practices.  

Key responsibilities in this position would include: 

• Support to the global team on climate and adaptive social protection in developing knowledge products and technical, policy and operational support to regional SPL teams.

• Prepare inputs for notes, briefs, papers, and analytical reports related to adaptive social protection and social safety nets; and assist with other related tasks.

• Review governments policies and programs; collect, manage, and analyze relevant data; perform statistical and econometric analysis; contribute to the analytical task(s) on social protection programs, including preparing background papers, working papers, research reports, policy briefings.

• Summarize knowledge and global best practice to meet the requests from clients; prepare knowledge briefs and case studies based on lessons learned from the SPL operations; provide inputs to the communication reports (e.g. newsletters, blogs);

• Support planning and organization of seminars and workshops.

• Organize, support and participate in the World Bank missions.

• Review government policies and programs; collect, manage, and analyze relevant data; perform statistical and econometric analysis; contribute to the analytical task(s) on social protection programs, including preparing background papers, working papers, research reports, policy briefings, or other deliverables as required. 

• Summarize knowledge and global best practice to meet the requests from clients; prepare knowledge briefs and case studies based on lessons learned from the SP&J operations; provide inputs to the communication reports (e.g. newsletters, blogs) for the lending operations. 

• Support planning and organization of seminars and workshops. 

• Organize, support and participate in the World Bank missions. 

The selected candidate will report to the Practice Manager, Social Protection and Jobs GP, ECA. 

  

SELECTION CRITERIA  

Education:

• Master’s Degree in a relevant social science discipline.

Experience:

• At least three years of experience social protection, preferably in the areas of social safety nets/social assistance; social insurance; social services; digital social protection delivery systems; poverty, vulnerability, and inequality; labor and migration; or other related fields.
   
• Experience with data management of large datasets (household surveys, such as Labor Force Surveys or Household Surveys). Extensive familiarity with econometric analysis (e.g. bivariate and multi-variate analysis, graphing plots) would be an asset.

Key Competencies:

• Excellent English communication skills.
   
• Knowledge of poverty trends, social protection and labor policies and programs, labor market trends.
   
• Willingness to work across ECA countries and ability to travel without restrictions.
   
• Knowledge of the Bank’ instruments, policies, procedures, and systems would be an asset.

Bitte senden Sie Ihre JPO-Bewerbung direkt an das Büro Führungskräfte zu Internationalen Organisationen (BFIO) unter Angabe der Chiffre Nr. 2025-2-49 auf dem Bewerbungsbogen 

Alle Informationen finden Sie unter www.bfio.de