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This paper investigates the demand for language skills using data on online job vacancies in 27 European Union member countries and the United Kingdom in 2021. Evidence indicates that although Europe remains a linguistically diverse labour market, knowing English confers unique advantages in certain occupations. Across countries included in the analyses, a knowledge of English was explicitly required in 22% of all vacancies and English was the sixth most required skill overall. A knowledge of German, Spanish, French and Mandarin Chinese was explicitly demanded in between 1% and 2% of all vacancies. One in two positions advertised on line for managers or professionals required some knowledge of English, on average across European Union member countries and across OECD countries in the sample. This compares with only one in ten positions for skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers and among elementary occupations.

This OECD Public Governance Monitor (PGM) provides a concise analysis of Sweden’s public governance system, instruments and capabilities, and helps identify areas of opportunities for public governance reforms. The report provides an overview of public administration in Sweden looking at public governance mechanisms around six key themes: public sector effectiveness, spending, citizen participation, the governance of climate change and other cross-cutting priorities, digital transformation, and public integrity. The report suggests several priorities for reforms to improve public sector effectiveness, increase the impact of participatory mechanisms, reinforce the governance of cross-cutting topics, strengthen the steering of digital government policy and take a more holistic approach to public sector integrity, in particular by revising the national anti-corruption plan.

This report provides input to a national review of the public research funding system in Sweden. It is designed to inform a broader dialogue that is taking place amongst different research stakeholders in Sweden. The report contains proposals and options for changes for Swedish public funding of research and innovation to effectively promote research excellence, support innovation and respond to societal needs. These proposals are supported by relevant international examples. The analysis takes into account insights from the OECD review of innovation policy in Sweden in 2016 and recent OECD work on different aspects of public research funding and research infrastructure.

This work leverages globally consistent data on parks from Google Maps, in combination with the computational power of Google Maps Directions API to quantify accessibility to parks across nearly 500 metropolitan areas in six countries: Estonia, France, Greece, Mexico, Sweden, and the United States. We combined high resolution population data from Worldpop with parks data and navigation estimates to measure: (1) Fraction of the population with access to parks within a 10-minute walk; and (2) the median walking time to the closest park. We find large differences in access to parks between countries, as well as large variability across cities and their respective commuting zones. To demonstrate how this framework can support cross country comparisons and efforts to track progress towards SDG11, we assessed access to parks by income group in selected countries, finding that the median walking time to a park is shorter for residents of low income neighbourhoods both in French and American metropolitan areas.

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.

This report examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Nordic labour markets and the associated policy responses undertaken in the areas of unemployment benefits, job retention schemes, active labour market policies and skill development policies. The report discusses the details of these policy measures across Nordic countries and draws out the main lessons learned from their response to the crisis. Finally, the report provides a set of key recommendations in each policy area to enable Nordic countries to build more inclusive and resilient labour markets in the post-pandemic period.

This profile identifies strengths, challenges and specific areas of action on cancer prevention and care in Sweden as part of the European Cancer Inequalities Registry, a flagship initiative of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. It provides a short synthesis of: the national cancer burden; risk factors for cancer (focusing on behavioural and environmental risk factors); early detection programmes; and cancer care performance (focusing on accessibility, care quality, costs and the impact of COVID-19 on cancer care).

Sweden is undergoing a major reform of its public employment service Arbetsförmedlingen towards contracting out employment services to independent providers. At the same time, Arbetsförmedlingen is also undergoing a significant restructuring, resulting in a downscaling of physical presence across the country and an increased digitalisation of services. As this report shows, the social economy and in particular work integration social enterprises can play an important role in the delivery of publicly-financed employment services. The report analyses the main features of the social economy in general as well as its current role in employment policies in Sweden. Moreover, it discusses challenges in engaging social economy organisations as providers in the market for contracted-out employment services in Sweden with respect to the legal framework, contracting rules, financial barriers, payment models, and co-operation structures. Lastly, it offers recommendations based on international practice to help design and implement the proposed policy recommendations in the Swedish context.

Sweden is undergoing a major reform of its public employment service (PES) Arbetsförmedlingen, shifting its main role from providing in-house services towards monitoring of providers and working with different stakeholders in guiding and implementing labour market policies. At the same time, the PES is undergoing a significant restructuring, resulting in a downscaling of physical presence across the country and an increased digitalisation of services. To support this reform and services to jobseekers across urban and rural settings, this report a describes the main features of the Swedish labour market and employment system and analyses the challenges of the reform from a local perspective. In light of international examples, it outlines policy options for contracting services to ensure coverage in all places and for all jobseekers, managing the balance between physical and digital services, and coordinating services at the local level.