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…

This research paper is the fifth in a series produced as part of the Cedefop project The changing nature and role of VET (2016-18). Based on comparative analysis of labour force survey data from 2014, the report analyses the vocational effect on labour market and education outcomes, asking whether any advantages conferred by vocational…

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…

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…

The main thesis of this paper is that measured unemployment bears a different relationship to real excess labor supply in the 1970s than it did in the 1960s. This thesis is used to explain the increase in measured unemployment in the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. (Author/EB)

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…

About three-quarters of current unemployment in these countries is due to deficient labor force demand. Changes in economic policy and improvement in labor mobility are necessary elements in solving the problem. (Author/SK)

This study investigated the early labor market experiences of second generation immigrants in the Netherlands, focusing on Turks, Moroccans, Surinamese, and Antilleans. Researchers examined those leaving school and their job experiences. Data came from a 1998 nationwide survey involving the four minority groups and a Dutch reference group in 13…

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…

In the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Denmark, employment trends have been considerably more favorable than in Germany. A country is considered successful in an employment policy context if unemployment is falling steadily or is low and if employment is increasing steadily or the employment rate has reached a high level.…

This paper considers the economics of employment and education in industralized countries, particularly European countries. The paper covers six main topics. The first part deals with the present European employment situation, using figures mainly from Holland; the second part is an economic outlook for the 1980s; in the third, the employment and…

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…

This paper reconstructs the main arguments in the public debate on the market position of those with higher education degrees and uses available data to explore their empirical validity. It speculates about the impact of recent changes in the Dutch system of higher education on the labor market position of its graduates. (JB)

This volume presents 6 papers by 22 labor economists who examine and address worker displacement in 10 industrialized countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Netherlands, United States). "Summary and Synthesis" (Peter J. Kuhn) discusses these four categories of lessons learned from panel…