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 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.

OECD unemployment rate stable at 6.1% in February 2017

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 job market continues to improve in the OECD area, with the employment rate finally returning to pre-crisis levels. But people on low and middle incomes have seen their wages stagnate and the share of middle-skilled jobs has fallen, contributing to rising inequality, 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.

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.

OECD unemployment rate stable at 5.4% in February 2018

The OECD has launched an online public consultation on the draft Recommendation on Public Service Leadership and Capability. Governments, recruitment managers, human resource officials, international organisations, academics and individuals are encouraged to participate in this consultation and help shape the future of employment and leadership in the public sector. Deadline is the 14 September 2018.

Today, global leaders from governments, private sector companies, trade unions and civil society pledged to take concrete action towards closing the gender pay gap by 2030. The global commitments – to ensure women in every sector of the workforce are paid equally to men for doing work of equal value – were made at the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) Pledging event held during the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

"Anna: Kisan Baburao Hazare"; Director: Shashank Udapurkar; Cast: Shashank Udapurkar, Tanishaa Mukerji, Rajit Kapur, Govind Namdeo, Kishor Kadam, Sharat Saxena and Daya Shankar Pandey; Rating: **1/2

"Trolls"; Directors: Mike Mitchell, Walt Dohrn; Cast: Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Zooey Deschanel, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Christine Baranski, Russell Brand, Gwen Stefani, John Cleese, James Corden and Jeffrey Tambor.

The objective of this seminar was to facilitate the implementation of administrative simplification strategies in MENA countries and to deepen the knowledge about the use of ICT-tools and consultation processes with stakeholders.

Greece could save its businesses hundreds of millions of euros a year and improve their competitiveness by reducing administrative burdens, according to a new OECD report.

Despite major progress, Turkey still lags behind most comparable countries in terms of exported value added per capita. Its remarkable economic performance over the past 15 years has not been sufficiently backed by gains in export market shares, in particular when measured in value added terms.

The OECD Behavioural Insights Conference brings together behavioural practitioners and policy makers from around the world to discuss how using behavioural insights can affect policy change.

This paper identifies the existing arrangements for air quality co-operation in North East Asia and provides guidance to advance regulatory co-operation.

A detailed explanation of the methodology used to build the OECD PMR indicators

The Phase 3 Report on Japan by the OECD Working Group on Bribery evaluates and makes recommendations on Japan'simplementation and application of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions and related instruments.

Ireland should increase its resources to detect and investigate foreign bribery more efficiently. Resources have, in recent years, been largely devoted to investigating non-bribery cases in the financial sector. Ireland has not prosecuted a foreign bribery case in the twelve years since its foreign bribery offence came into force, and law enforcement has taken few proactive steps to investigate allegations.

Due to serious concerns about the extremely low level of enforcement of Japan’s offence of bribing foreign public officials – just three prosecutions since 1999 – the OECD Working Group on Bribery recommended in December 2013 that Japan establish an Action Plan to organise police and prosecution resources to be able to proactively detect, investigate and prosecute cases of foreign bribery by Japanese companies.

OECD Forum on Financing Democracy and Averting Policy Capture

One of the more startling findings in the OECD Foreign Bribery Report, is that some level of corporate management was involved in over 50% of the cases sanctioned. This paper by Leah Ambler, published in the Journal of Business Compliance (01/2015), examines what went wrong and why from a corporate governance and compliance perspective.

OECD Deputy Secretary-General Doug Frantz and EUIPO Executive Director António Campinos will launch the joint report “Trade in Counterfeit and Pirated Goods: Mapping the Economic Impact” at 12:00 CET on Monday 18 April at the OECD Conference Centre in Paris.

Further structural reforms are needed to help the business sector boost productivity growth and overcome the key challenges of sluggish investment in advanced economies and excess capacity in emerging economies, according to a new OECD report.

A high-level Working Group mission will visit Tokyo on 29-30 June 2016 and meet senior Japanese government officials.

The OECD Working Group on Bribery in International Transactions has continuously urged Japan since 2002 to strengthen its efforts to fight bribery by Japanese companies in their foreign business activities, and implementation of the Convention on Combating the Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.

The public consultation took place from 1 August to 31 October 2016.

The paper summarises views expressed by practitioners at a workshop in Beijing on 13-14 April 2016 with respect to contemporary challenges in international co-operation in corruption cases and possible solutions to mitigate these challenges. It has a practical orientation and is intended to contribute to ongoing dialogue at national and multilateral levels on enhancing international co-operation.

This report provides a map for strengthening the OECD’s work in combating corruption and promoting integrity. It will help to guide reflection on current and future work, with a view to ensuring that the Organisation's anti-corruption and integrity policies are more coherent, more globally relevant and impactful.

Countries must step up work to ensure that tax authorities and anti-corruption authorities can effectively co-operate in the fight against tax evasion, bribery, and other forms of corruption, according to a joint OECD/World Bank report.

The 2011 edition of Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators enables countries to see themselves in the light of other countries’ performance.

Without adequate investment in skills, people languish on the margins of society, technological progress does not translate into inclusive economic growth, and countries can no longer compete in an increasingly knowledge-based global society, said OECD Secretary-General.

A country’s success in integrating immigrants’ children is a key benchmark of the efficacy of social policy in general and education policy in particular. The variance in performance gaps between immigrant and non-immigrant students across countries, even after adjusting for socio-economic background, suggests that policy has an important role to play in eliminating such gaps.

Although the salaries of experienced teachers in Japan are high relative to other OECD countries, their starting salaries are lower and working hours are longer. Moreover, different from the trend across OECD countries, teachers’ salaries have been declining since 2000 in real terms.

Education at a Glance 2012: Country Notes - Japan (Japanese)

This seminar will provide an opportunity for participants to share experiences on issues such as the influence of accelerated commercialization of education and a knowledge-based society.

To pursue economic growth, Russia must develop its human capital, which requires structural reforms in education, healthcare and pensions. These, in turn, must respond to major trends in service provision, including the increasing role of individual choice, the need to deliver lifelong learning and healthcare, and the risk that Russians will increasingly buy services abroad, rather than work to develop their own national systems.

How do apprenticeships and other forms of workplace learning help people to make a successful transition from school to work? Global economic competition requires a labour force with a range of mid-level trade, technical and professional skills alongside the high-level skills typically associated with university education.

Between 2000 and 2011, the number of international students has more than doubled. Today, almost 4.5 million tertiary students are enrolled outside their country of citizenship.

Dr Barbara Ischinger, Director of Education and Skills, OECD, France - Better Skills, Better Lives (Tackling the global talent gap - Global Skills Exchange, Leipzig Germany, 6th July 2013)

Students who know how to summarise information tend to perform better in reading. If disadvantaged students used effective learning strategies to the same extent as students from more advantaged backgrounds do, the performance gap between the two groups would be almost 20% narrower.

Note summarising the performance of 15-year-old students in Singapore in the PISA 2012 assessment of problem solving.

Note summarising the performance of 15-year-olds in Japan in the PISA 2012 assessment of problem solving.

Students from Singapore and Korea have performed best in the first OECD PISA assessment of creative problem-solving. Students in these countries are quick learners, highly inquisitive and able to solve unstructured problems in unfamiliar contexts.

This conference on 9 April 2014 will provide an opportunity for a mutual sharing of good practice in fostering the better insertion of youth into the labour market through the development of quality apprenticeships. It would also seek to foster a greater commitment by countries to take action to introduce or strengthen apprenticeship initiatives and to take stock of the progress achieved.

Quick: Who has more up-to-date textbooks: students in wealthier schools or students in poorer schools? Actually, it depends where you live. As this month’s PISA in Focus explains, not only are some countries better than others in allocating their educational resources more equitably across schools, but students in these countries generally perform better in mathematics.

The quality of an education system today shapes the economic and social prosperity of the country tomorrow. Chile has embarked on wide-ranging reform to improve the quality and equity of its education system on several fronts, including early childhood education and care (ECEC), school funding, student selection, school governance, teacher career pathways, vocational education and training (VET) and tertiary education.

The United Arab Emirates is identified by PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) as one of the most rapidly improving education systems in the world. However its students still perform well below the levels expected in advanced economies.

Education systems have made major strides to close gender gaps in student performance but girls and boys remain deeply divided in career choices, which are being made much earlier than commonly thought, according to a new OECD report.