Utilizing the Survey of Adult Skills from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and the OECD database, this study investigates the role of gender inequality and public social spending in the gender gap in Not in Employment, Education, or Training (NEET) risk across various age cohorts. The research identifies a…

This article explores cross-country patterns in how conditions relating to family background, education, and the labor market are related to literacy and numeracy skills. It seeks to assess whether these patterns are in agreement with models of skills formation as identified in the political economy literature. The novelty of this article resides…

This report shares data in the following categories as they relate to graduates in Ontario's economy: (1) Rising Ontario employer requirements for skills; (2) Matching skills to employer needs: pathways, entrepreneurship, and innovation; (3) Ontario's college graduate advantage compared to the U.S.; (4) International competitiveness: the quality…

People with higher levels of education report less prevalence of depression in all OECD countries with data. A greater share of women than men report suffering from depression, but the share decreases more steeply for women than for men as educational attainment increases. Employment is associated with a lower share of self-reported depression,…

Compared to unpaid leave, paid family leave may better help working parents balance the competing needs of job and family early in a child's life, among other advantages. Yet the United States remains one of only two countries in the world without a statutory national paid maternity leave policy, and one of the only high-income countries that…

This report shares data in the following categories as they relate to graduates in Ontario's economy: (1) Number of jobs for young adults without post-secondary credentials; (2) Matching credentials to employer needs: an international comparison; (3) Matching credentials to employer needs: industry, entrepreneurship, and innovation; (4) Access to…

While the benefits of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services to better learning are now widely acknowledged, a widespread and accessible provision for these services also helps support gender equality in the workforce. In particular, the availability, intensity, reliability and affordability of ECEC play an important role in engaging…

The transition from tertiary education to work involves substantial uncertainty and changes between education programmes, jobs and industries. The current major disruption in the labour market is only going to increase this uncertainty, making it essential for graduates to be prepared for it. Graduates with more dynamic career trajectories are…

Vocational education and training (VET) is a major policy topic for countries all over the world, who are eager to learn from the best examples where participation in VET is high and youth unemployment is low. Policymakers want to know how strong VET systems manage challenges like rapid technological change, matching labor market demand for…

Lifelong learning is becoming increasingly important in today's societies. Individuals need to develop their skills through training in order to be successfully integrated in the labor market. We use data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies to investigate gender differences in training across 12 countries. We…

Across OECD countries, more and more individuals have attained tertiary education and the share of those with less education has declined. Although there are more tertiary-educated individuals than ever before, they still achieve good labour market outcomes. This confirms that labour market demand is generally keeping pace with rising educational…

Using the 2012 PIAAC data, our analysis confirms that there are significantly higher earnings and employment returns to "both" increasing levels of formally recognised education, and to increasing levels of numeracy, literacy and information and communication technologies (ICT) skills proficiencies controlling for the level of education.…

Ample evidence indicates that a person's human capital is important for success on the labor market in terms of both wages and employment prospects. However, unlike the efforts to identify the impact of school attainment on labor-market outcomes, the literature on returns to cognitive skills has not yet provided convincing evidence that the…

This report investigates the prediction of labor force status using observed variables, such as gender, age, and immigrant status, and more importantly, measured skill variables, including literacy proficiency and a categorical rating of educational attainment based on the 1994 International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), the 2003 Adult Literacy…

This paper looks at the importance of mechanisms that give formal recognition to vocational skills acquired through work-based learning and how such mechanisms might be developed. It describes how skill recognition can benefit individuals, employers and society as a whole, and identifies in which contexts skill recognition has the highest…