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The demand and supply of tertiary workers contribute to shaping their earnings advantage. The expansion of tertiary education has been accompanied by a decrease in the earnings advantage of tertiary-educated younger and older workers in many OECD and partner countries. Tertiary-educated workers reap the largest advantage in countries where few adults have completed tertiary education, such as Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia and Mexico. Tertiary-educated workers with high literacy skills have considerably higher earnings than tertiary-educated workers with lower skills. Older tertiary-educated workers benefit from both their relative scarcity among their generation and their longer professional experience, resulting in a higher earning advantage than their younger counterparts. It is difficult to say whether younger tertiary educated workers will achieve the same earnings advantage over time that the older generation currently enjoys. However, a formal qualification is not the sole assurance of higher earnings: higher skills lead to positive financial outcomes across all educational attainment levels.

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This paper is part of a series of briefs that highlight specific indicators in OECD's Education at a Glance that are of particular interest to policy makers and practitioners. Adult migrants in all OECD countries are a diverse group, with different profiles and levels of education. Even if they hold tertiary degrees, they are more likely to have poorer labour market outcomes, including lower earnings. Participation in the labour market is more difficult for foreign-born adults who arrived at a later age and acquired their qualifications in another country. It is important that host countries design and implement policies that will help immigrants improve their chances in their labour market, benefitting both the person and the country.

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This report is part of a series that aims to offer policy advice to governments and other higher education stakeholders who would like to learn how well their systems are performing in comparison to others. The series will provide insights on how higher education systems are performing overall and in specific areas; why some systems are performing better than others; and what countries can learn from the experience of others.

The higher education system in Norway generally produces graduates with good skills and labour market outcomes. This success can be largely attributed to Norway's robust and inclusive labour market and recent higher education reforms to improve quality. However, some Norwegian students have poor labour market outcomes and past success is no guarantee of future success, especially as the Norwegian economy upskills and diversifies. This report provides advice and recommendations to improve the labour market relevance and the outcomes of higher education in Norway. The analysis finds that there is an opportunity to expand work-based learning opportunities, improve career guidance, and do a better job of using innovative learning and teaching practices to improve labour market relevance across the system. The report concludes that Norwegian policy makers have a larger role to play in steering the system. Policy makers can set the conditions for greater labour market relevance by strengthening the mechanism for collaboration between higher education institutions and employers, ensuring better coordination and use of labour market information, and redoubling efforts to support quality learning and teaching.

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Profiling tools, which assess the job finding prospects of jobseekers, differentiate jobseekers likely to become long-term unemployed from jobseekers likely to find work quickly. Thereby they help to deliver employment services more efficiently. This brief provides an outline of the effective design and use of profiling tools in a wide range of countries, while highlighting possible risks and limitations.

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Migration has been at the centre of political debate across the OECD in recent years. Drawing on data from the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), this report provides new evidence on differences in migrants' characteristics and contexts and considers how these relate to the skills migrants possess. It also examines the relationship between migrants' skills and their labour and non-labour market outcomes in host countries. Finally, it sheds new light on how migrants' skills are developed, used and valued in host country labour markets and societies. Results and lessons gleaned from analysis highlight the way forward for future research on this topic. The report represents an invaluable resource for policy makers across different sectors as they design and implement strategies aimed at promoting the long-term integration of foreign-born populations in the economic and social life of their countries. The analyses presented allow us to identify the skill composition of foreign-born populations, the labour market and broader social outcomes associated with such skills, and the factors that can promote skill acquisition and skill use.

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This brief focuses on the population aged 25-34. The sample includes data from OECD member, OECD accession and G20 countries, for the years 2005-16 for OECD member countries and 2005-15 for non-OECD countries. The data reveals that, over the next decade, a growing proportion of young adults are expected to attain tertiary education, with China and India leading the way - in particular in the fast-growing and highly relevant fields of STEM. Nonetheless, while women in OECD and G20 countries are expected to experience a greater increase in tertiary attainment than men, they may continue to lag behind in STEM, where they have been consistently under-represented. The challenge for the near future will be to ensure that educational systems are able to provide tertiary degrees that are both of high quality and relevance, in an equitable and inclusive manner.

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The members of the G20 are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union. Show less

The digital revolution is promoting new forms of employment mediated by online platforms. The scale and scope of these changes are hard to assess because conventional labour market statistics and economic indicators are ill-suited to measure platform work. This brief provides estimates of the importance of online work (one type of platform work that is carried out entirely online) in OECD countries using the Online Labour Index (OLI) - an indicator based on real-time data from five of the world's largest English-language online labour platforms.

Early signs show that online work has been growing rapidly but the sources of this demand and where it is carried out vary considerably across countries and regions. Most tasks are posted in OECD countries (particularly in the United States), but the majority of workers are based in non-OECD countries (with India being a particularly important player). Estimates adjusted by GDP and population size reveal that online work plays a relatively more important role in small countries with prominent IT sectors (such as Estonia, Ireland and Latvia). Platforms appear to give clients in OECD countries access to a much wider pool of talent and they are more likely to seek certain skills abroad than others.

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Currently, Japan has the highest old-age dependency ratio of all OECD countries, with a ratio in 2017 of over 50 persons aged 65 and above for every 100 persons aged 20 to 64. This ratio is projected to rise to 79 per hundred in 2050. The rapid population ageing in Japan is a major challenge for achieving further increases in living standards and ensuring the financial sustainability of public social expenditure. However, with the right policies in place, there is an opportunity to cope with this challenge by extending working lives and making better use of older workers' knowledge and skills. This report investigates policy issues and discusses actions to retain and incentivise the elderly to work more by further reforming retirement policies and seniority-wages, investing in skills to improve productivity and keeping up with labour market changes through training policy, and ensuring good working conditions for better health with tackling long-hours working culture.

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This report is part of a series that aims to provide a strategic approach to skills policies. There is a shift from formal education to a broader perspective that includes a range of hard and soft skills people need to acquire over their lifetime in order to succeed in the labour market. Workers, students, parents, employers, education providers and government agencies now need reliable information on how supply and demand for skills evolve. The reports in this series present OECD internationally comparable indicators and policy analysis covering a range of issues such as: quality of education and curricula; transitions from school to work; vocational education and training; employment and unemployment; innovative workplace learning; entrepreneurship; brain drain and migrants; and skills matching with job requirements.

A well-coordinated adult learning system will be essential to support the achievement of Slovenia's long-term development goals. The transformational effects of globalisation, technological progress and demographic change on life at work and outside of it amplify the importance of getting adults' skills right. OECD research shows that individuals, employers and society benefit from adults having higher levels of skills. Slovenia has achieved significant improvements in student performance and tertiary attainment in recent decades. Yet today, many adults in Slovenia have only low levels of basic skills. Participation in adult learning remains below Slovenia's targets, especially for low-skilled, unemployed and older adults, and workers in small businesses. Against the backdrop of a growing economy and awareness about the importance of skills, Slovenia's government, social partners and stakeholders have a unique opportunity to improve how they share responsibility and work together in the adult learning system. This report outlines how Slovenia can strengthen the enabling conditions for co-operation, co-operation between specific actors (ministries, municipalities and stakeholders), and co-operation on specific challenges (promotion and financing). It recommends eight actions that government, social partners and stakeholders can take to strengthen co-ordination and co-operation, in order to improve participation, outcomes and cost-effectiveness in adult learning.

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This report is part of a series that aims to provide a strategic approach to skills policies. There is a shift from formal education to a broader perspective that includes a range of hard and soft skills people need to acquire over their lifetime in order to succeed in the labour market. Workers, students, parents, employers, education providers and government agencies now need reliable information on how supply and demand for skills evolve. The reports in this series present OECD internationally comparable indicators and policy analysis covering a range of issues such as: quality of education and curricula; transitions from school to work; vocational education and training; employment and unemployment; innovative workplace learning; entrepreneurship; brain drain and migrants; and skills matching with job requirements.

Portugal has put education and skills at the forefront of the political agenda for many years, but more than half of adults have not completed upper secondary education. With the population ageing rapidly and a growing skills divide between generations, Portugal needs to further strengthen its adult-learning system. To make change happen, Portugal will need a clear vision for the adult-learning system and a strong partnership between all stakeholders - all levels of government, education and training providers, employers, trade unions, the non-profit sector and learners. This report outlines areas where the accessibility, flexibility and quality of the adult-learning system can be improved, where governance and financing mechanisms can be strengthened, and provides examples of international and national good practice to help achieve these objectives. The report provides a series of concrete actions to help Portugal improve the adult-learning system and in turn enhance economic growth and social cohesion.

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