In this ever-changing world, particularly in attempting to overcome the challenges around COVID-19, the need to support the upskilling of all people in Northern Ireland has never been greater. The pandemic has led to significant rises in unemployment. These rises have been limited by the furlough scheme, but significant numbers of people were…

This report examines how digital credentials and learning and employment records (LERs) are shaping the ways people access education and career opportunities around the world. In this report, the authors share key findings from their research on digital credentials and LERs and present three detailed case studies of initiatives to govern and…

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…

Nowadays, women outperform men in educational attainment in many countries. Still, large variation between countries remains. Emancipatory contexts in which individuals are raised might explain these differences in male-female educational attainment, both over time and across countries. This study examines individual and contextual factors that…

In this paper we seek to put Irish poverty rates in a comparative European context. We do so in a context whereby the Irish economic boom and EU enlargement have led to increasing reservations being expressed regarding rates deriving from the EU "at risk of poverty" indicator. Our comparative analysis reports findings for both overall…

Ireland has experienced an unprecedented level of economic growth since the mid-1990s. The present article assesses the extent to which this phenomenon has altered the level and nature of youth unemployment, using data from six waves of a nationally representative survey of school-leavers. The main impact of the "Celtic Tiger" has been…

This paper explores the impact of policies and institutions on employment and unemployment of OECD countries in the past decades. Reduced-form unemployment equations, consistent with standard wage setting/price-setting models, are estimated using cross-country/time-series data from 21 OECD countries over the period 1982-2003. In the…

An analysis of unemployment rates, wages, and policy initiatives for school "early leavers" in Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom suggests that early withdrawal from school represents a substantial, transnational problem attributable to basic policy problems. It is noted that no policy initiatives directly address…

This document consists of the 24 papers delivered at a conference that had five workshops examining various dimensions of the social and occupational transition of young people. The papers are arranged by workshop/session. A summary report precedes the other papers presented during a session. The papers in the session on perspectives on systems,…

A study compared developments in size of apprenticeship programs and changes in the distribution of apprentices over occupational categories in Ireland, Scotland, and the Netherlands during the last 2 decades. Data were from the "time-series" school leavers' surveys database. Findings indicated, toward the late 1990s, Irish…

The Census of Population provides data on the structure of employment by occupation and industry for Ireland that are supplemented by the Labor Force Survey (LFS), which collects information on employment by occupation and industry. Expected strong growth in the Irish economy from 1993-98 should lead to a significant increase in employment. This…

This book examines the transition from higher education to the labor market in 10 countries. Although the individual papers do not follow a rigid standard format, they all consider the following issues: (1) how the labor market for graduates is organized; (2) how vocational orientation is achieved in degree courses in individual countries; and (3)…

An international team of researchers studied the following aspects of training in Ireland's retail sector: structure and characteristics, institutional and social context, employment and labor, changing conditions and their implications for skill requirements, and training and recruitment. Data were collected from an analysis of social and…

This project aimed to develop a more comprehensive conceptual framework of school-to-work transitions in different national contexts and apply this framework to the empirical analysis of transition processes across European countries. It drew on these two data sources: European Community Labor Force Survey and integrated databases on national…