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

Improving school-to-work transitions and ensuring better career opportunities for youth after labour market entrance are common goals in emerging and advanced economies as they can contribute to raising the productive potential of the economy and to increasing social cohesion. However, the challenges faced in achieving these objectives and the policies required vary between emerging and advanced economies.

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.

We are looking for national and sub-national policies and initiatives for social enterprise creation and development. The focus will be placed on initiatives funded by the European Social Fund, by other EU funds and programmes, by Member States and sub-national authorities and NOT on examples of successful social enterprises.

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.

On 14-15 January 2016 the OECD will host a Ministerial meeting on Labour and Employment, and a Policy Forum on the Future of Work.

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.

The OECD and the Italian government are stepping up cooperation to ensure effective implementation of local development strategies to boost jobs, encourage entrepreneurship and increase social inclusion. An agreement, to be signed in Rome on 1 December 2015, will renew the mandate of the OECD Trento Centre for Local Development and establish a satellite office in Venice.

The webinars enabled serious discussion on the concept of ‘local economic resilience’ in an informal setting that facilitates interaction and questions. The format featured presentations from policy experts and a roundtable discussion with the audience.

Recent reforms have made pension systems more financially sustainable and pensioners have higher living standards than ever before. But future generations are likely to find their pension entitlements much less generous than today’s and many may face a serious risk of pensioner poverty, according to a new OECD report.

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.

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.

More equal access to employment services and better co-ordination between the government and social partners could help disadvantaged laid-off workers get back into employment, according to a new OECD report.

The project will identify the policy levers and instruments that can be helpful in the design of strategies to accompany the transition to older local labour markets, and identify how national policy frameworks can best support these transformations.

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.

OECD Employment and Labour Ministers meeting in Paris have underlined their commitment to boosting employment, particularly for young people and the long-term unemployed, tackling labour market inequalities and helping people with mental health issues find and stay in work.

OECD Employment and Labour Ministers meeting in Paris have underlined their commitment to boosting employment, particularly for young people and the long-term unemployed, tackling labour market inequalities and helping people with mental health issues find and stay in work.

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.

Skills for growth: human capital composition and economic performance

The webinars will enable serious discussion on the concept of ‘local economic resilience’ in an informal setting that facilitates interaction and questions. The format will feature presentations from policy experts and a roundtable discussion with the audience.

Good pay, labour market security and a decent working environment can go hand in hand with high employment, according to new OECD findings on the quality of jobs in 45 countries.

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.

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.

All OECD countries, except the United States, provide nationwide paid maternity leave. Over half also offer paternity leave to fathers right after childbirth. By enabling fathers to take on a greater share of the childcare burden, parental leave can support women’s careers.

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

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.

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.

Australia should provide early access to more intensive employment services for disadvantaged laid-off workers to help them find a new job more quickly, according to a new OECD report.

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.

The OECD LEED Programme launches this "Call for Initiatives" to extract what local authorities and other actors know works, what the new scenario is demanding and how equipped they are to respond. We are interested in learning from the experiences of EU member countries, the wider OECD area as well as other countries.

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.

11th edition of Trento Festival of Economics: the arena where economists, political and institutional stakeholders, researchers and journalists from all over the world, will exchange views and investigate the topic “Where growth takes place”.

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.

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.

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.

Prince William did it, Justin Timberlake did it, and so did David Cameron and Mark Zuckerberg. All four took paternity leave to spend time with babies George, Charlotte, Silas, Florence and Max. These trailblazers are great role models in combining family and work–at least when a new baby arrives–but men around the world are still too slow in following their example.

Ongoing innovation in technology is changing labour markets worldwide. To understand the future of work in the digital era, we need to move away from the traditional economic classification of manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors.

Workers can be mismatched by qualifications while their skills are, in fact, adequate for their jobs. This situation, ‘apparent’ qualification mismatch is more common in certain fields of study than in others and speaks to the need of strengthening the links between employers, education providers and students to share information on the true skills, to avoid true skills mismatch.

The purpose of the seminar is to provide the practical information about how to implement SIBs in Poland using international experiences. The seminar is addressed to the potential applicants interested in the implementation of SIB within the call for proposals planned to be launched by the Ministry of Economic Development.

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.