Context: Existing studies have explored the association between workplace training and wages suggesting that training participation may have a positive association with wages. However, we still know very little about whether this association varies between men and women. Through its potential positive association with wages, training may balance…

Using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, this paper compares the earnings premium and employment share of jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) across 11 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The results reveal that the STEM wage premium…

Using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, this paper compares the earnings premium and employment share of jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) across 11 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The results reveal that the STEM wage premium…

The labour market outcomes for native- and foreign-born adults during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic vary considerably across countries -- with inequalities in employment even falling in some cases compared to 2017. In contrast with the 2008 financial crisis, greater educational attainment does not seem to have had a clear protective…

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 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…

This paper proposes a theoretical framework where "within graduates" wage inequality is related to overeducation/educational mismatch in the labor market. We show that wage inequality may arise because of inefficient self-selection into education in the presence of ability-complementary technological progress and asymmetric information…

In the wake of the technological revolution that began in the last decades of the 20th century, labour market demand for information-processing and other high-level cognitive and interpersonal skills is growing substantially. The "Survey of Adult Skills," a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult…

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the link between age and proficiency in information-processing skills, based on information drawn from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). The data reveal significant age-related differences in proficiencies, strongly suggesting that proficiency tends to "naturally" decline with age. Age…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to verify whether higher education increases the likelihood of young Italian workers moving from non-standard to standard wage contracts. Design/methodology/approach: The authors exploit a data set on labour market flows, produced by the Italian National Statistical Office, by interviewing about 85,000…

In Germany, students are streamed at age ten into an academic or nonacademic track. We demonstrate that the randomly allocated disadvantage of being born just before as opposed to just after the cutoff date for school entry leads to substantially different schooling experiences. Relatively young students are initially only two-thirds as likely to…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the gender impact of tertiary education on the probability of entering and remaining in self-employment. Design/methodology/approach: A data set on labour market flows produced by the Italian National Statistical Office is exploited by interviewing about 62,000 graduate and non-graduate…

This working paper assesses the ease of immigrants' integration in OECD labour markets by estimating how an immigration background influences the probability of being active or employed and the expected hourly earnings, for given individual characteristics. Applying the same methodology to comparable data across twelve OECD countries, immigrants…

Applies comparative techniques originated by K. Wolpin and G. Psacharopulos to discriminate between the "weak" and "strong" screening hypotheses, employed to determine whether societal investment in upgrading or expanding education is justified. Controlling for sample selection, this study finds evidence for weak screening in…

This bulletin examines the labor market experience of youth in the United States and eight other industrial countries from the early 1960s to the late 1970s. The analysis focuses upon unemployment, the most visible and measurable form of labor underutilization. The report highlights the size of the youth unemployment problem and discusses some of…