This study examined the challenges companies encounter attempting to fill job vacancies with applicants having the requisite skills. Of the 115 journals evaluated as part of the literature review, 64% of the documents identified issues related to workplace skills development deficiencies in industry and academia. Additional findings related to…

Criteria lists of academic skills are widely used to assess the work readiness of people who are looking to enter or re-enter the apprenticeship market. These instruments represent a particular hurdle in the path to vocational training for low-skilled would-be trainees. We investigate the validity of one such list used in Germany. As different…

The student workforce plays a substantial part in several low-paying industries such as retail and hospitality, and this has grown over time. However, there has been little recent research. The usual assumption is that students compete successfully with the local labour force for low-skill, part-time jobs, but there is little evidence for this.…

Skill mismatch, the discrepancy between the skill levels held by employees and those demanded by employers, has long been of interest to analysts of the labor market. Such mismatches are worth exploring to better understand the processes of recruitment and career development and the role of education in the labor market. This study aims to analyze…

Economists, policymakers and other experts spend a great deal of time talking about the "future of work," but in many ways, the future is already here. Profound changes are already affecting our workforce and economy, including globalization, automation, and artificial intelligence. We need to adapt to these changes by adequately…

We present new evidence on the pandemic's effects on youth, for the first time focusing on perceived effects on the learning of job skills, as well as on education. The context is post-Brexit Britain. We find that 47% of young people in a representative sample perceive a loss of learning of job skills, while a sizeable minority (17%) judge that…

A skilled workforce is a prerequisite for productivity and a stepping stone for innovation. This is the reason why education and investment in skills have been made the foundations of Europe 2020, Europe's strategy to overcome the economic crisis and boost growth. The propensity for developing skills is consistently present in European countries…

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a stark spotlight on need for digital skills among a wide swath of the American workforce. But even before the pandemic, the US labor market reflected a growing demand for workers across industries to have strong digital skills. This report uses data from a rigorously designed international assessment to analyze…

Research on the labour market experiences of highly skilled migrants has revealed the crippling employability challenges they face in the UK workplace resulting from the devaluation of their homeland qualifications and experiences. Studies on highly skilled migrants from Zimbabwe have revealed how migrants have to resort to semi-skilled and…

The future of work--resulting from fast- paced changes in technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and fluctuations in the way we perform work--will create economic growth and new jobs across the country, but only for communities that are prepared and for workers with the necessary skills. This report outlines Jobs for the Future's policy…

Today's shop floor, the area of a factory where operatives assemble products, is a complex and demanding work environment. The employed and produced technology becomes ever more complex, and employees are responsible for an increasing amount of tasks. As a consequence, the employee is under constant pressure to solve problems occurring on the shop…

The drivers of learning for mid-career workers with few initial qualifications from the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy and Poland are examined. The focus in this article is upon the learning pathways and experience of the low-qualified drawn from empirical research which gathered and analysed the strategic career and…

This paper is the first in a series of policy reports dealing with the impact of human capital investments on the U.S. labor market. It is part of a larger series of papers from the ETS Center for Research on Human Capital and Education that uses data from the "Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies" (PIAAC) to…

The research investigation into the career trajectories of low-skilled, mid-career individuals in Europe, on which this symposium focused, has emphasised the importance of career support. Participants sometimes had not even completed their initial school qualifications. Often, though not always, they had significant skill deficits. The majority of…

As a result of changing employer needs, shifts in the labour supply, and demographic forces, there could be increasingly significant mismatches between worker skills and job requirements by 2030, which could raise structural unemployment levels and slow economic growth. These gaps would include shortages of high-skill workers in advanced economies…