Labour market conditions are improving in many OECD countries but the recovery from the recent economic crisis remains very uneven. Employment is still growing too slowly in the OECD area to close the jobs gap induced by the crisis, even by the end of 2016. Consequently, unemployment for the OECD as a whole is projected to continue its slow decline, reaching 6.6% by the end of 2016.

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.

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

Encouraging more people to continue to work later in life would help Denmark meet the challenges of its rapidly ageing population. The ratio of the population aged 65 and over to the working-age population is projected to increase from 30% in 2012 to 43% in 2050, according to a new OECD report.

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.

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.

The recent mental health reform is an important step towards better services for people with mental ill-health, but Australia needs to do more to help people with mild to moderate mental health issues at and into work, according to a new OECD report.

The OECD’s most recent ‘Investing in Youth’ country reviews identify three broad streams of solutions to provide disadvantaged youth with the skills they need and thus reduce the share of youth outside of education or employment.

This work addresses the role of global value chains (GVCs), workforce skills, ICT, innovation and industry structure in explaining employment levels of routine and non-routine occupations. The analysis encompasses 28 OECD countries over the period 2000-2011.

The digital revolution, globalisation and rapid population ageing are changing profoundly the types of jobs needed and the way we work, and may lead to even more dramatic changes over the coming decades. Will the many unemployed ever find a job again with the skills they have today in new world of work? Where are new jobs being created and what do they look like?

Back to the future of work, policy discussion at the Forum on the Future of Work and Labour Ministerial, 14 and 15 January 2016.

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

Latvia faces a huge demographic challenge. Since restoration of its independence in 1991, the country lost more than a quarter of its resident population.The report "Investing in Youth: Latvia" states that investing in youth, by upgrading skills and promoting employment, is a priority if Latvia wants to offer its young people a positive outlook and address the demographic challenge.

Lithuania needs to boost job creation and reduce labour costs in order to help more young people into work, according to a new OECD report.

Openness to change and a continuous questioning of the way we work are the keys to being prepared for the Future of Work. This advice comes from Mark Keese, Head of the Employment Analysis and Policy Division at the OECD, and we catch up with Mark following the OECD's Future of Work Forum in January 2016.

Analysis relying on a new OECD measure of the routine intensity of occupations shows the extent to which countries differ in the share of employment accounted for by routine jobs. It finds that while technological innovation is always associated with higher employment, ICTs correlates positively with employment in all occupations but not in high-routine jobs. Finally, offshoring need not hurt routine-intensive workers.

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.

OECD analyses have begun to understand the relationship between digitalisation, jobs and skills, the magnitude of potential job substitution due to technological change, the relationship between globalisation and wage polarisation, as well as the changes to the organisation of work.

A range of OECD analysis has been exploring the relationship between digitalisation, jobs and skills, the magnitude of potential job substitution due to technological change, the relationship between globalisation and wage polarisation, as well as the changes to the organisation of work. This post focused on a recent paper on Automation.

When nearly a million Vietnamese “boat people” fled their country in the late 1970s and early 1980s and sought refuge elsewhere, they were typically seen as a burden and often turned away. Eventually, many were allowed to settle in the US. Most arrived speaking little or no English and with few assets or relevant job skills. Yet Vietnamese refugees are now more likely to be employed and have higher incomes than people born in the US.

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.

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.

New research points to the role of field-of-study mismatch in explaining the long-term effects of cyclical labour market shocks. It suggests that policy effort ought to be directed not just towards the NEETs, but also towards youth who find employment during recessions, given their higher risk of prolonged field-of-study mismatch and lower wages if mismatch is accompanied by overqualification.

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.

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 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.

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.

The OECD has just released a new working paper by Thor Berger and Carl Frey which provides a systematic overview of the literature examining the impact of digitalisation on labour markets. The paper highlights some well-known as well as some lesser-known facts about digitalisation, deindustrialisation and the future of work.

In a majority of OECD countries, GDP growth over the past three decades has been associated with growing income disparities.

Widespread increases in inequality over the past three decades have raised the question of the distribution of the growth dividends.

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.

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.

The talk of the town this year has truly been the so-called fourth industrial revolution–and rightly so. Digitalisation causes an increasing interconnectivity of people, production and processes. Combined with the rapid development in artificial intelligence, self-learning machines and robot technology it heralds a new time of revolutionary technological progress.

Recent debates of Basic Income proposals shine a useful spotlight on the challenges that traditional forms of income support are increasingly facing, and highlight gaps in social provisions that largely depend on income or employment status. Reforms towards more universal income support would need to be introduced in stages, requiring a parallel debate on how to finance a more equal sharing of the benefits of economic growth.

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.

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.

Costa Rica enjoys relatively high life satisfaction levels, but should do more to develop a more inclusive and sustainable economy, according to a new OECD report.

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.

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.

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

Norway should step up its efforts to boost the job prospects of young people without upper-secondary qualification to further reduce the share of under-30 year-olds who are Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEETs), according to a new OECD report.

Finland should offer labour-market-oriented integration support to all migrants, strengthen efforts to identify and address early vulnerabilities, and work more closely with employers according to a new OECD report.

The risk of job automation is much higher in some regions than others within countries, meaning governments will need to address any widening of job inequality between one area and another in the coming years, according to a new OECD report.

For everyone to benefit from the changes in technology, globalisation and population ageing, adult learning systems must be ready to support people in acquiring the skills needed for this changing world of work. The EC and the OECD have joined up to discuss how to make adult learning work for the future in your country, by organising three webinars in September and October, and a forum on the 8th of November in Vienna.

"Doctor Strange"; Director: Scott Derrickson; Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen, Tilda Swinton, Michael Stuhlbarg, Benjamin Bratt and Scott Adkins;

Director: Ang Lee; Cast: Joe Alwyn, Kristen Stewart, Chris Tucker, Garrett Hedlund, Makenzie Leigh, Vin Diesel, Steve Martin, Brain "Astro" Bradley, Arturo Castro.

Rapid population growth, ageing infrastructure and new weather risks are straining the ability of cities in OECD countries to provide clean water and to protect against floods and droughts, according to a new OECD report. Cities will need large-scale investment and more effective tariffs and taxes to pay for upgrades to water systems.

This OECD Regulatory Policy Working Paper relies on an empirical stocktaking of mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) among selected OECD countries. It aims to build a greater understanding of the benefits and pitfalls of one of the 11 mechanisms of international regulatory co-operation.

OECD will measure the impact of digitalising the Mexican Social Security Institute formalities and guide future efforts on simplification

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.