Publications

Despite numerous measures, gender stereotypes about abilities in mathematics and reading persist in schools, affecting both boys' and girls' schooling and educational choices. Inequalities also persist outside the classroom, where women, despite greater educational attainment, experience lower employment rates and often receive lower salaries than men with similar levels of education. Nonetheless, the many measures taken by countries have brought some encouraging signs of progress. However, more work is needed to ensure that improvements in education are also reflected in improvements once boys and girls transition into the world of work.

This report presents a comprehensive analysis of the use and structure of corporate bond markets in Asia. Based on original data, it assesses the extent to which corporations, in particular smaller growth companies, use bond markets and how that has developed over time. It also examines the regulatory frameworks that govern these markets in 19 different jurisdictions. Drawing from these findings, it formulates policy considerations for facilitating growth company access to corporate bond markets.

Cette synthèse présente un cadre conceptuel pour comprendre la performance non financière des entreprises par le prisme du Cadre de mesure du bien-être de l'OCDE. S'appuyant sur les approches existantes pour mesurer la performance sociale, elle propose un cadre et une série d'indicateurs pour ce que l'on peut appeler la « 1ère dimension de la performance sociale ». Il s'agit des résultats en termes de bien-être des parties prenantes qui évoluent au sein du périmètre organisationnel de l'entreprise, à savoir les salariés, et des ressources nécessaires au bien-être futur qui sont générées ou appauvries directement par entreprise elle-même et qui sont utiles à la société dans son ensemble. Il est intéressant de suivre l’évolution des résultats des entreprises dans le domaine social pour les personnes qui souhaitent comprendre les effets concrets des entreprises sur la société, ainsi que pour celles qui visent à maximiser la valeur à long terme de l’entreprise.

Over 100 million workers in Southeast Asia have jobs that are directly or closely linked to the environment, making them vulnerable to climate change impacts. These same workers likely earn at least 20% lower than the national average and are largely in informal employment. The region’s necessary transition towards greener growth could affect them in several ways: some sectors will create jobs and others will lose jobs or disappear altogether. Understanding the effects of both climate change and green growth policies on jobs and people is thus essential for making the transition in Southeast Asia an inclusive one. The study explores these issues, with emphasis on the potential effects on labour of an energy transition in Indonesia, and of a transition in the region’s agricultural sector, illustrated by a simulated conversion from conventional to organic rice farming.

Despite women’s increased participation in the labour market significantly contributing to past economic growth, persistent gender gaps across OECD labour markets hinder full realization of the potential gains of women’s economic participation. This paper analyses the economic implications of these gaps and evaluates the potential for future growth through greater gender equality in labour market outcomes. Utilising two methodological frameworks, the paper first employs growth accounting to measure the contribution of women's employment to past economic growth. The paper then uses a simplified version of the OECD Long-Term Model in conjunction with projections on future labour force dynamics to estimate the impact of greater gender equality on the labour market. These analyses provide insight into the potentially significant economic benefits of closing persistent gender gaps across OECD countries.

Increasingly, countries are integrating personalised public services to enhance access to, and the experience of those services to significantly improve outcomes for service users. Integrated services are particularly valuable for those with multiple and complex needs who require a range of tailored and, in some cases, specialised supports and services from more than one agency or service provider. Service specialisation can make it difficult for these service users to get the right mix of services and at the right time that best meet their needs. This paper provides a summary of how countries are integrating services to improve the lives and outcomes of care experienced by young people, people with disabilities, and people leaving prison. The paper is intended for policymakers who are seeking new or improved approaches to improving the outcomes of those who rely on personalised services.

The transition towards a green economy, the rapid development of new digital technologies and cultural change are some of the forces disrupting traditional career paths, resulting in more fluid and diversified career trajectories. To benefit from increased longevity, workers will increasingly have to consider job mobility at middle and older ages, changing jobs or careers more frequently than in the past. Making successful career transitions, however, tends to be more difficult for workers at older ages due to health issues, unfamiliarity with relevant technology or a lack of recent job search experience. This may result in a mismatch between the types of jobs they want and the jobs that employers may provide. This report presents evidence on recent trends in career mobility and the consequences for individual workers in terms of pay and other job characteristics. It identifies key employer and public policies that can help facilitate career mobility that results in better employment choices at older ages. This requires overcoming discriminatory views towards older workers, improving job flexibility choices and ensuring that government policy supports voluntary career mobility.

Data on online job postings represents an important source of information for local labour markets. Many countries lack statistics on labour demand that are sufficiently up-to-date and disaggregated across regions, sectors and occupations. Web-scraped data from online job postings can provide further insights on the trends in labour demand and the skills needed across regions, sectors and occupations. This paper assesses the comparability and validity between Lightcast and other data sources for Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden, for the years 2019 to 2022 across regions, sectors and occupations. It concludes with some recommendations for labour market analysts that want to use data on online job postings for assessing labour demand trends.

This paper presents the first international assessment of the Lightcast vacancy data representativeness based on benchmarking against officially reported vacancy data in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. The analysis compares distributions in the Lightcast data versus official data across large (TL2) regions, industrial sectors and occupational categories. The analysis shows differences in representativeness across countries and on the three dimensions considered. In general, regional representativeness is considerably better than both occupational and sectoral representativeness.