As the first edition of “Youth Skills day” unfolds, about 40 million youth aged 15-29 in OECD countries are either looking for work or entirely disconnected from the labour market and from education and training.

This report delivers evidence-based and practical recommendations on how to better support employment and economic development in Israel. Based on sub-national data analysis, it provides a comparative framework to understand the role of the local level in contributing to more and better quality jobs.

Countries where skills are less equally distributed tend to have higher wage inequality. Putting skills to better use can help reduce wage inequality, by strengthening the links between workers’ skills, productivity and wages.

The work will seek to identify good practices for employer engagement in the areas of both developing and utilising skills, including setting up innovative workplace learning methods, designing effective employer partnerships with the employment and training system as well as financing mechanisms for employer-led training, including how best to reach SMEs.

This blog post looks at the importance of assessing and anticipating skill needs as recent empirical literature warns about the negative impact that skills mismatch can have on individuals and economies as a whole.

The fact remains that robots have persistently failed to imitate the most human of skills, such empathy, teamwork, relationship building, etc. While technology may be reducing the demand for some routine skills, it is simultaneously increasing the demand for more difficult-to-automate social skills.

7th annual expert meeting of the initiative on Employment and Skills Strategies in Southeast Asia (ESSSA) and GIZ/ RECOTVET Policy Dialogue - 7-8 October, 2015 - Sokha Angkor Resort, Siem Reap, Cambodia

In 2010, the G20 called for the development of a set of internationally comparable indicators of skills for employment and productivity for Low-Income Countries (LIC) as part of its Multi-Year Action Plan on Development. To respond to this call, the OECD has established the World Indicators of Skills for Employment (WISE) database in close collaboration with the World Bank, ETF, ILO and UNESCO

Agreeing on skill needs is fundamental to develop a coherent response to skills imbalances. This can only be achieved if information is disseminated to all stakeholders in a pro-active way. For this, in turn, there is the need for the developers of skills anticipation exercises to engage their audience more effectively

The seminar was organised by IPRASE, provincial institute for research and educational experimentation, instrumental body of the Autonomous Province of Trento, the Autonomous Province of Trento and the OECD LEED Trento Centre. The seminar represented a first public reflection on the Trentino Multilingualism Plan within a national and international comparison framework, in view of future prospects.

The potential for automation is limited when it comes to social skills, which is why social skills are increasingly rewarded in the labour market. Technological change is shaping the future of work through, in part, a skill-biased effect on employment.

Older workers earn more than younger workers with the same skills. So what explains the lower return to skill among younger, less-experienced workers? Employers may need time to learn about (and reward) the true skills of young workers. “Experience and the returns to education and skill in OECD countries, Evidence of employer learning?” published in the OECD Journal: Economic Studies.

High-skilled jobs as an important driver of overall employment growth in the EU and the impact of high-skill job creation goes beyond the highly educated workforce. If European regions are very unequal in terms of high-skill intensity, they are converging slowly.

Youth who have disconnected from the education system and are not working or planning to return to training are at high risk of marginalisation. Review of programs and other initiatives to re-connect.

Being able to directly measure all the above aspects would be extremely useful but economists and analysts usually face severe data limitations (e.g. small sample size, data comparability, measurement error etc.) and are, in many instances, forced to use second-best proxies to describe skills and build indicators.

Skills for growth: human capital composition and economic performance

Investing in Youth in Tunisia most important than ever, and the still relevance of the last Investing in Youth review 2014.

Average wages can vary markedly between socio-economic groups (gender, native- and foreign-born; high-skilled and low-skilled parents; workers of different ethnicities; age). These differences between groups of workers contribute to high overall wage inequality.

Regional disparities in the supply and demand of skills do exists in many OECD countries. Local level actors need to be equipped with the right tools and capacities to develop innovative employment and job creation strategies tailored to their local conditions.

Discussion on how technology helps measuring skills shortages in real time

A discussion on how can we reconcile the apparently contradicting views of labour market demand for soft skills versus technical job-specific skills.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and J.P. Morgan through its Foundation today launched a new project “Adapting to Changing Skills Needs” to fill knowledge gaps in the assessment of skill mismatches and to identify international best practice in addressing them.

Today the OECD is launching a new project with JP Morgan and Chase Foundation to measure and analyse skills needs in a harmonized way across countries. Experts from various countries and fields of discipline are meeting at the OECD to discuss methodological issues involved in developing a cross-country indicator of skill needs. By informing policy, this new data tool will make strides towards addressing skill shortages.

Sweden should address housing shortages, begin integration activities early, and improve the support for those with low skills to speed up the effective integration of refugees, according to a new OECD report.

Recent fires in Fort McMurray draw attention to a town that has been a prime destination for internal mobility in Canada over the past decades. This post discusses the role that geographical internal mobility can play in improving the matching of skill demand and skill supply in a national labour market, while also noting some of the barriers to labour mobility and potential economic and social costs.

This study will analyse how selected local areas/industry clusters identify the specific skills needed to support green growth and how related skills policies and practices can be made more effective in supporting their provision and accelerating transition to a low-carbon economy.

Tax incentives are used widely across OECD countries to incentivise individuals to invest in education and training, but are they effective? Recent evidence from the USA highlights the risk of creating overly complex systems in which the embedded incentives are no longer fully understood by individuals. This carries an important lesson for other countries in designing their own tax measures for skills investments.

A more skilled population ahead: age or cohort effects? Evidence from PIAAC and the differences in policies approach.

The demand for soft skills is increasing, and recent evidence suggests that the supply does not seem to keep up. The benefits from further development of these skills go beyond better labour market outcomes, as soft skills have been shown to contribute to overall well-being.

Today, the OECD publishes "Skills Matter: Further Results from the Survey of Adult Skills", the Second International Report for the Survey of Adults Skills, which covers a further nine countries and sub-national entities – Chile, Greece, Indonesia (Jakarta), Israel, Lithuania, New Zealand, Singapore, Slovenia and Turkey– that collected data in 2014-15.

This chapter analyses how skills are used at work, why skills use matters for workers and economies and its key determinants. It draws on data for the 28 OECD countries participating in the Survey of Adult Skills.

The recently published Second International Report for the Survey of Adults Skills looks in detail at the extent to which proficiency in literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments matters for the well-being of individuals and nations. The answer that emerges is clear: proficiency is positively linked to a number of important economic and social outcomes.

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.

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.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) are profoundly changing the skill profile of jobs. Skill development policies need to be overhauled to reduce the risk of increased unemployment and growing inequality.

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.

An increasing number of middle-income countries are participating in projects measuring cognitive skills of the adult population. Large differences in skill levels exist between these countries, with some having a large skills gap compared to OECD countries. Skill differences not only reflect differences in educational attainment, as skill levels among adults with the same level of educational differ widely across countries.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) are changing profoundly the skill profile of jobs. To thrive in the digital economy, ICT skills will not be enough and other complementary skills will be needed, ranging from good literacy and numeracy skills through to the right socio-emotional skills to work collaboratively and flexibly.

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 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.

The Slovenian economy is rebounding after a long downturn, experiencing stronger growth, declining unemployment, healthier public finances and renewed income convergence with more advanced European economies. Further reforms are now needed to increase investment, boost productivity, improve living standards and ensure that all Slovenians benefit from inclusive growth, according to a new report from the OECD.

Full and effective implementation of recent reforms, including the Jobs Act and the Good Schools reform, would help boost growth in Italy by improving people’s skills and ensuring their more effective use across the country, according to a new OECD report.

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.

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.

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.