Labour markets are continuing to recover from the crisis and employment is set to return to pre-crisis levels in 2017, but wage growth remains weak, according to a new OECD report.

Despite unprecedented progress over the past century, gender gaps in the labour market persist throughout the world and are especially marked in emerging economies. While the quantity of jobs held by women has increased in many countries, female workers continue to have worse jobs than men.

Denmark was hit harder by the global financial crisis than its neighbouring countries and the OECD area, but is now slowly recovering. In the first quarter of 2016, the employment rate was still 4.8 percentage points lower than before the GFC with only minor improvement since 2013.

The labour market recovery in the Netherlands is lagging behind. As of the last quarter of 2015, the unemployment rate stood at 6.7%, just one percentage point lower than its cyclical peak and three percentage points higher from its level at the start of the global financial crisis. As a result of the sluggish recovery, the unemployment rate in the Netherlands is now slightly higher than that for the OECD as a whole.

Skill requirements are changing rapidly as a result of structural shifts. Workforce employability is essential to turn structural change into an opportunity for all. Education and training systems, labour markets, workers and workplaces will have to become more adaptable. A set of concrete actionable measures is proposed to improve the employability of each economy’s workforce.

Despite unprecedented progress over the past century, gender gaps in the labour market persist throughout the emerging world and are accompanied by important skill gaps. Women tend to perform worse in STEM subjects, have lower financial literacy and business knowledge than men. The OECD Employment Outlook 2016 paints an up-to-date picture of gender gaps in 16 emerging economies and outlines a comprehensive set of policy recommendations.

The Netherlands should improve its policies to attract and retain highly skilled migrants in order to address labour shortages and strengthen its position as a knowledge-based economy, according to a new OECD report.

Low birth rates have become a pressing issue in Italy and many young Italians feel they do not enjoy the necessary economic stability to plan ahead and start a family. Education that matches the skill needs of employers leading to work-based learning in the form of apprenticeships can be useful to help young Italians plan ahead and to sustain the much needed increase in the birth rate.

The post-crisis recovery in entrepreneurial activity remains mixed across countries, but new data released today by the OECD provides tentative signs of a turning point, with trends in enterprise creation rates pointing upwards in most economies.

New research finds that green jobs use high-level cognitive and interpersonal skills more intensively compared to non-green jobs, and tend to be less routinized. They are also heterogeneous in terms of skill level.

This paper delivers a broad assessment of income inequality in Denmark.

Reforms that boost growth by enhancing economic flexibility often meet strong opposition related to concerns that they may imply adverse consequences for categories of workers. This study investigates how making product or labour market regulation more flexible changes workers’ risks of moving out of employment and jobless people’s chances of becoming employed.

Skill requirements in the labour market have significantly changed over the past two decades. The restructuring of the economy is making the labour market increasingly knowledge-based.

Malaysia has sustained over four decades of rapid, inclusive growth, reducing its dependence on agriculture and commodity exports to become a more diversified, modern and open economy.

Productivity growth is essential to providing sustainable increases in living standards. Malaysia has reached a development stage where growth needs to be driven more by productivity gains than the sheer accumulation of capital and labour inputs.

Malaysia has followed a comparatively equitable development path, largely eliminating absolute poverty and greatly reduced ethnic inequality.

This paper provides a quantitative description of decoupling in OECD countries over the past two decades, with the results suggesting that it is explained by declines in both labour shares and the ratio of median to average wages (a partial measure of wage inequality).

New Zealand should extend access to income support and introduce a longer minimum notice period for all workers to help disadvantaged laid-off workers find a new job and maintain their job quality and living standards, according to a new OECD report.

Brazil’s old-age pensions have reduced old-age poverty below OECD levels, but pension expenditures of 8.2% of GDP are expected to rise rapidly as the population ages. A pension reform is necessary to ensure the financial sustainability of the system.

Lending volumes and credit conditions for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have gradually improved, according to a new report from the OECD, but demand-side obstacles such as a lack of financial knowledge are contributing to holding back a stronger recovery.

In an increasingly competitive international environment, providing workers with the right mix of skills can help ensure that globalisation translates into new jobs and productivity gains rather than negative economic and social outcomes, according to a new OECD report.

The slowdown in productivity growth - already underway before the crisis – combined with sluggish investment, continued to undermine rises in economic output and material living standards in recent years in many of the world’s economies, according to a new report released today by the OECD.

Japan should step up efforts to improve young people’s job prospects and reduce the share of 15-29 year-olds who are not in employment, education or training (the “NEETs”), according to a new OECD report.

The way businesses operate is rapidly changing. A strong online presence and tailored services are crucially important to their global development. Together with the emergence of the on-demand economy the traditional employment relationship is therefore being replaced by a diversity of more detached, agile and adaptable forms of employment.

The conference on Adapting to changing skill needs was an OECD event supported by the JPMorgan Chase Foundation. This event showcased the OECD Skills for Jobs database, providing detailed information about the skill needs of the labour markets in all EU countries and South Africa.

This policy brief discusses the possible impact of digitalisation on women and men, and proposes a range of policies to ensure that technological change supports a closing, and not a widening, of gender gaps.

Women in the Middle East and North Africa are better educated and better skilled than ever, yet legal and social barriers mean the share of them in work is still the lowest in the world. Bringing family and labour laws into line with gender goals would enable more women to enter employment and would make MENA economies more competitive and inclusive, according to a new OECD report.

OECD CLIs point to stable growth momentum in the OECD area

This conference organised jointly by the OECD, Warwick University, the Work Foundation, and the Centre for Cities brought together stakeholders from national government departments, cities, Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) as well as business, NGOs and research institutions to discuss the key challenges facing the United Kingdom in building more and better quality jobs

South Africa has suffered from persistently high unemployment and low labour force participation rates. Moreover, country faces high qualification and field-of-study mismatch. Promoting skills development is a key priority in many of the South African government’s plans and strategies. As a result, the OECD suggests several policy recommendations and good practice examples from other countries in order to address those issues.

New well-being data released today expose deep divisions in our society along fault lines of age, wealth, gender and education. The OECD’s latest How’s Life? report shows that while some aspects of well-being have improved since 2005, too many people are unable to share the benefits of the modest recovery that is underway in many OECD countries.

In a new report, the OECD says that France should modernise and strengthen the co-ordination of labour immigration in order to attract foreign talent and align itself more closely with the needs of the labour market.

To boost growth, productivity and earnings, the UK should encourage lifelong learning among adults and promote better skills utilisation, according to a new OECD report.

The UK has enjoyed record-high employment levels in recent years and one of the lowest unemployment rates among OECD countries. However, labour productivity growth, which is closely linked to the use of skills, remains weak. As a result, the OECD’s Getting Skills Right: United Kingdom suggests that several actions should be taken to bring skill supply more in line with skill demand to help to boost growth, productivity and earnings.

Years after the start of the recession the situation of youth in the Italian labour market remains quite bleak. Nearly one in four young people in Italy are neither in employment, education, or training (NEETs) and many young people lack the right skills. Within this context, the government is introducing promising reforms to give young people a better start in the world of work.

Building on a rich set of survey and administrative data and using detailed information collected through new OECD policy questionnaires that were addressed to Labour Ministries and social partners, this webpage provides an updated and comprehensive picture of collective bargaining systems and their different building blocks.

This seminar focused on the main challenges in Trentino (Italy) concerning the necessary actions to overcome existing burdens – administrative firstly but also financial and concerning business service available at local level - and to ease the start-up of new and innovative business as well as attract FDI and international business.

France’s economy is growing and the labour market is gradually improving. However, the share of people out of work for more than 12 months remains high and many young people are on temporary contracts, with weak long-term job prospects and little opportunity for training.

Recent reforms of Italy’s education system (“Buona Scuola”), labour market (“Jobs Act”) and industrial policy (“Industria 4.0”) have clear synergies and could reduce worrying imbalances between the supply and demand of skills on the Italian labour market, according to the new OECD report Getting Skills Right: Italy.

Skill mismatches and shortages are pervasive in the Italian labour market. In light of the many skill challenges, the Italian Government recently launched a set of comprehensive reforms. However, a number of implementation challenges remain, which are discussed in the recently released OECD report Getting Skills Right: Italy.

Providing American seniors with better work incentives and opportunities will be crucial for the United States to meet the challenges of its rapidly ageing population. By 2028, more than one in five Americans will be aged 65 and over, up from fewer than one in six today, according to a new OECD report.

France Stratègie discussion of OECD report Getting Skills Right: France

Lithuania’s economy has recovered strongly from the global financial crisis, with GDP, wages and employment levels back up to their pre-crisis levels. The country should now focus on tackling the demographic challenge of a fast-declining population and making the job market more inclusive, according to a new OECD report.

Korea’s economy has progressed rapidly over the past 40 years, catching up with the level of well-being in most OECD countries. It now needs to continue and speed up the reforms of its labour market in order to strengthen its social safety net, create better quality jobs and boost inclusive growth, according to a new OECD report.

Policy Brief on the Future of Work: Putting faces to the jobs at risk of automation

Chile’s economy is strengthening and wage growth picking up. The country should now address the challenge of improving people’s skills, particularly among women and low-skilled workers, in order to boost productivity, innovation and inclusive growth, according to a new OECD report.

The OECD LEED Trento Centre is working with Italy and the Autonomous Province of Trento to strengthen capacities to develop and implement integrated strategies targeted at improving the quality of life and well-being of people and reversing demographic trends in ‘inner areas’ (sparsely populated areas and stranded communities isolated from large and medium-sized urban centres).

The OECD Trento Centre is undertaking a review (2017/2018) to identify the needs and priorities for policy improvement and to foster the exchange of experiences, the capitalisation of acquired know-how and the generation of new and fresh thinking in the Adriatic-Ionian macro-region.

Unions and employers, together with governments, can play a major role in making growth more inclusive and helping workers and businesses face the challenges of a changing world of work. Good labour relations are a way to reduce inequalities in jobs and wages and better share prosperity, according to a new OECD-ILO report.

Weak labour productivity growth continues to mark the world’s advanced economies and risks compromising improvements in living standards, says a new OECD report.