Vulnerable employment within the South-East Asia and the Pacific region remains a signficant challenge, and although progress has been made to reduce working poverty, this decline has slowed considerably in recent years (between 2008 -11). The Asian regions have therefore accounted for all of the catch-up in levels of labour productivity between thedeveloping and developed regions between 1991 and 2011. This, in turn, was driven largely by productivity growth in East Asia, where output per worker stood at 20 per cent of the level in the developed economies in 2011, against only 6 per cent in 1991.