Publications & Documents

The impact of productivity on employment remains uncertain, particularly in light of growing concerns regarding potential negative effects of technological progress on labour demand. This report uses harmonised and comparable data from 13 countries spanning the last two decades to comprehensively analyse how productivity growth affects employment dynamics at various levels of aggregation. The study's findings highlight a positive correlation between productivity growth and employment as well as wage growth, both at the firm level and on a broader scale. This outcome arises from counteracting mechanisms and heterogeneous dynamics across different groups of firms. The findings have relevant policy implications: productivity is not just an isolated key economic objective, but well-designed and complementary policies can also help convert technological and organisational change into higher employment and wage growth.

This paper quantifies changes in employment and the demand for skills in the European Union following the implementation of Fit for 55 policies. Between 2019 and 2030, the economy is projected to grow by 1.3% in the Fit for 55 scenario (3% in a Baseline scenario without the Fit for 55 policies). Employment growth is projected to be lower in the Fit for 55 than the Baseline scenario. Employment in the Fit for 55 scenario is projected to decrease by 3% for blue collar and farm workers (2% in the Baseline) and increase by 4 5% for other occupations (5-6% in the Baseline). The most demanded skills following the implementation of Fit for 55 will be those related to inter personal communication and the use of digital technologies, whereas the demand for skills related to the use of traditional tools and technologies is projected to decline. Anticipating changes in employment and the demand for skills as well as the socio-demographic profile of those most affected can facilitate the design of upskilling and reskilling efforts and promote the reallocation of workers across sectors and occupations.

A changing world of work brings the importance of Vocational Education and Training (VET) to the forefront, as it has the ability to develop the skills that are needed in today’s labour markets and societies. At the same time, structural changes highlight the need to re-engineer certain parts of VET systems in some countries to make them more resilient and ensure they can make the most of the opportunities ongoing changes present. This report zooms in on four key dimensions of future-ready VET systems: i) responsiveness to changing skill needs; ii) the flexibility to make VET work for all; iii) the ability to support transitions into a changing labour market and further learning; iv) the potential of digital technology to innovate VET design and delivery. For each of these dimensions, the report presents a set of key questions that policymakers and other VET stakeholders should consider when re-engineering VET to make it more future-ready, as well as insights from data and international examples of policies and practices.

This paper analyses the impact of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) extensions on jobseeker households in selected US states and examines how these extensions compare to the pre-pandemic policies. The analysis finds that PUA extensions increase benefit duration for all jobseekers, but due to interactions between other government benefits, this translates to significant increases in benefit generosity only for jobseekers without children. This has an impact on the financial incentives to take up employment, although incentives are still above the OECD average. PUA extensions have little impact for people who have been unemployed for a very long time, and jobseekers with no recent contribution history. PUA extensions also have minimal impact on jobless families with children who continue to receive less support compared to other OECD countries.

This study sets out a conceptual framework to analyse the impact of climate change and greenhouse gases mitigation efforts on the labour market, migration flows and people’s health, as well as the most important policy levers that can cushion potential negative impacts and maximise opportunities from the climate transition.

The Rethinking Regional Attractiveness in the New Global Environment report highlights lessons learned from multiple regional case studies from five EU countries (Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden), additional work with Latin American and Caribbean regions, and a series of webinars and one-on-one dialogues on rethinking regional attractiveness. The OECD’s innovative multidimensional approach to assessing regional attractiveness considers global engagement beyond international connections and economic factors alone. The methodology considers more than 50 indicators to develop regional attractiveness profiles covering six domains of attractiveness: economic attraction, connectedness, visitor appeal, natural environment, resident well-being, and land-use and housing. The report helps regional and national policy makers to understand how individual regions fare in a new global environment that continues to deal with the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, compounded by the consequences of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and existing megatrends – all of which produce asymmetric impacts within and between countries and regions – and identify the policy levers available to enhance their attractiveness to the international target groups of investors, talent, and visitors. It also considers the need to co-ordinate across levels of government, across policy fields, and with private stakeholders, and highlights good practices to implement regional attractiveness policies.

This study provides an in-depth examination of the fiscal and governance decentralisation of long-term care (LTC) across OECD countries, offering projections of future fiscal burdens of LTC spending across levels of government. With rapid population ageing and a decrease in the supply of informal care, LTC spending has increased significantly. The paper introduces a novel methodology to estimate LTC expenditures across different government levels, including central and subnational governments. By analysing country cases, it explores the responsibilities assigned to each government level and the implications for service delivery and intergovernmental coordination. The study also discusses the overall anticipated increase of LTC expenditure to 2.3% of GDP by 2040, identifying the most impacted countries. This research contributes to our understanding of LTC systems, highlights the challenges of increasing LTC costs and provides insights for optimising governance and fiscal expenditure.

The need to rapidly decarbonise economies raises questions about whether countries’ workforces possess the requisite skills to achieve the net zero transition as well as the capacity to redeploy workers from 'brown' to 'green' jobs. This paper applies a task-based framework to granular data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) and country-specific employment sources to generate new indicators of the green skills structure of labour markets for a large number of OECD countries and non-OECD EU countries. Significant cross-country differences emerge in the underlying supply of green skill and the potential of economies to reallocate brown job workers to green jobs within their broad occupation categories. In a majority of detailed brown occupations, workers have in principle the necessary skills to transition to green jobs, with the exception of those in production occupations, who may require more extensive re-skilling. In contrast, workers from most highly automatable occupations are generally not found to have the sufficient skills to transition to green jobs, suggesting more limited scope for the net-zero transition to reinstate labour displaced by automation.