Employment

Policies aimed at reducing the environmental impact of human activities have important consequences for labour markets, jobs, and skills. As employment is shifting towards more sustainable activities, workers are increasingly expected to have skills that support the transition to a greener economy. Assessing and anticipating emerging skill needs is crucial to avoid bottlenecks and sustain the green transition. This report sheds light on existing methods to measure changes in skill demand and supply related to the green transition through an in-depth review of practices in five OECD countries (Australia, Austria, France, Norway and Sweden). It also identifies best practice on how to feed information on changing skill needs into policies, notably in the areas of employment, career guidance, education and adult learning.

About one in ten young people in Australia are neither in employment, education or training (NEET), a factor that may lower their long-term economic prospects and threaten their well-being. Individuals who did not graduate from upper secondary education, who have health limitations, or who are Indigenous are over-represented in this group. Preventative policies and interventions targeted at adolescents in their early- to mid-teens can reduce the share of young people out of employment, education and training. This report explores what is known about the potential preventative impact of educational and pre-employment interventions on later NEET status and presents a range of policies and initiatives from across the OECD that can reduce the NEET probability among key at-risk populations. The report covers interventions to prevent early school leaving and to promote student engagement and motivation; to strengthen career education, career guidance and employer engagement; and to improve the perception of the vocational education and training (VET) system and the learning of VET students. The report also provides recommendations on improving the monitoring and evaluation of youth policies in general and policies to keep young people in employment, education and training in particular.

The paper discusses the implications of recent advances in artificial intelligence for knowledge workers, focusing on possible complementarities and substitution between machine translation tools and language professionals. The emergence of machine translation tools could enhance social welfare through enhanced opportunities for inter-language communication but also create new threats because of persisting low levels of accuracy and quality in the translation output. The paper uses data on online job vacancies to map the evolution of the demand for language professionals between 2015 and 2019 in 10 countries and illustrates the set of skills that are considered important by employers seeking to hire language professionals through job vacancies posted on line.

As societies become increasingly digital, cyber security has become a priority for individuals, companies and nations. The number of cyber attacks is exceeding defence capabilities, and one reason for this is the lack of an adequately skilled cyber security workforce. This report analyses the demand for cyber security professionals in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States using information contained in online job postings. The analysis looks at recent trends in the demand for workers in different types of cyber security roles, the geographical distribution of cyber security job postings, and the changing skill requirements for professionals in this field. The report also looks at the supply side, zooming in on the landscape of cyber security education and training programmes in England (United Kingdom). It describes the different types of programmes provided in further and higher education, the profile of learners in these programmes and their outcomes. Finally, the report also looks at policies and initiatives adopted in England to make cyber security education and training programmes more accessible and relevant. This report is part of a larger initiative examining the evolution of policies and experiences in the cyber security profession around the world.

This study responds to six key questions about the impact that the demand for Artificial Intelligence (AI) skills is having on labour markets. What are the occupations where AI skills are most relevant? How do different AI-relevant skills combine in job requirements? How quickly is the demand for AI-related skills diffusing across labour markets and what is the relationship between AI skill demands and the demand for cognitive skills across jobs? Finally, are AI skills leading to a wage premium and how different are the wage returns associated with AI and routine skills? To shed light on these aspects, this study leverages Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms to analyse the information contained in millions of job postings collected from the internet.

Being able to swim empowers individuals to make choices, have agency, and be free to choose core aspects of their life, such as working safely on or near water. It is also associated with lifelong health benefits and reduces the risk of drowning. Using data from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll 2019, this paper provides the first global estimates of adults’ ability to swim without assistance. Individuals in high-income countries are considerably more likely to report being able to swim without assistance than individuals in low-income countries. Disparities also exist within countries. In particular, women are less likely to be able to swim without assistance than men in virtually all countries, birth cohorts, and levels of education. Investing in reducing inequalities in life skills, such as swimming, can foster economic development and empowerment, especially in light of threats, such as climate change.

Understanding adults’ attitudes towards the environment is necessary to gauge the opportunities and challenges of creating effective and politically-feasible climate policies. Using data from the Wellcome Global Monitor 2020, the European Social Survey (Round 8), World Values Survey and EM-DAT, this paper examines how adults’ environmental attitudes vary within and across countries and details how environmental attitudes are associated with adults’ engagement in pro-environmental behaviours and support for environmentally-friendly policies. The paper explores whether the extent to which individuals prioritise the environment over the state of the economy or vice versa depends on individuals’ exposure to natural disasters or negative labour market conditions. Results indicate that people’s economic vulnerability and the sectors they work in impact their attitudes towards their environment and support for public policy. Furthermore, the findings suggest that increases in unemployment and exposure to natural disasters influence the extent to which individuals prioritise the environment.

The paper is the first in a series of two papers mapping young people’s environmental sustainability competence in EU and OECD countries that were prepared as background for the forthcoming OECD Skills Outlook 2023 publication. The papers are the results of a collaboration between the OECD Centre for Skills and the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (Unit B4) on students’ environmental sustainability competence. The second paper is titled: ‘The environmental sustainability competence toolbox: From leaving a better planet to our children to leaving better children for our planet’.

The paper is the second in a series of two papers mapping young people’s environmental sustainability competence in EU and OECD countries that were prepared as background for the forthcoming OECD Skills Outlook 2023 publication. The papers are the results of a collaboration between the OECD Centre for Skills and the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (Unit B4) on students’ environmental sustainability competence. The first paper is titled ‘Young people’s environmental sustainability competence: Emotional, cognitive, behavioural and attitudinal dimensions in EU and OECD countries.

In a rapidly changing world of work, adults in Australia are being challenged to upskill, retrain and consider alternative career paths. Mid-career adults are in a unique position: they have acquired considerable skills and work experience but still have many years left in the labour market before retirement. They thus may need help to build on their existing skills to progress but have time before retirement to recoup their training investments. If well designed, career guidance can facilitate employment transitions for this group and usefully inform their training choices. This report assesses the career guidance services that are currently available to mid-career adults in Australia and puts them into an international perspective. New online survey data shows Australia performs well in OECD comparison with respect to the use of career guidance services, but there is room to strengthen the inclusiveness of these services and to tailor them to the needs of mid-career adults. The report provides concrete recommendations in this regard.