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In this paper we document the impact of education levels on labour market outcomes from 1994 to 2010 using national household survey data. We show that higher levels of education are strongly rewarded in the labour market in terms of earnings and that a tertiary qualification improves an individual's prospects of employment. While the premium for matric and incomplete secondary has fallen marginally over the period, the premium to tertiary has risen, especially for women. Differences in the reward to education level are evident for Africans versus the overall population, between urban and rural areas and for younger versus older workers. In particular, the premium to tertiary education has increased at a higher rate for Africans than for the overall population.

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In mid-2008, high employment and low unemployment rates characterised the Estonian labour market in comparison with the average of the [European Union] EU15 countries. While aggregate outcomes improved during 2000-07, large inequalities persisted across regions, ethnic groups, and workers with different skill levels. As Estonia entered recession in 2008, the unemployment rate almost doubled between the second and the fourth quarter, and is expected to rise further in 2009 and 2010. More flexible labour markets will be a key adjustment mechanism during the recession as well as in the medium term if Estonia is to become a knowledge-based economy. Given the currency board arrangement and low synchronisation with the euro area, flexibility is also needed to cushion asymmetric shocks. In December 2008, parliament adopted the new Employment Contract Act, deregulating employment protection while increasing income security of the unemployed. This paper discusses options for removing the remaining barriers that impede worker reallocation across jobs, sectors, and regions into more productive activities.

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Knowing who gains and loses from regulatory reform is important for understanding the political economy of reform. Using micro-level data from 26 countries, this paper studies how regulatory reform of network industries, a policy priority in many advanced economies, influences the labour market situation of workers in network industries. Estimates are identified from changes in a worker's pay, industry-level employment flows and regulation over time. The main finding is that the regulation of network industries provides workers in this industry with a wage premium and higher employment stability relative to similar workers in other industries. Regulatory reform therefore tends to align labour income and employment stability in the reformed industry with those in other industries. Workers in the reformed industry lose out compared with others, because they no longer benefit from 'excess' pay and employment stability.

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With sound framework conditions, fine universities, good infrastructure and policies friendly towards foreign direct investment, Ireland scores high in international innovation scoreboards. Overall, policies to boost innovation and entrepreneurship are on the right track, but investment in knowledge-based capital could be made a more dynamic source of growth and jobs. While Ireland has made good progress towards building up its scientific capabilities, innovation capacity remains weaker than in other small advanced OECD countries, such as Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland.

To become more effective, the innovation strategy should be simplified, with a drastic reduction in the number of government agencies involved in funding innovation, so as to better focus on strengthening the linkages between the business and academic communities. While attracting high-tech multinationals should remain central, there is potential to better develop spillovers between these firms and domestic [small and medium-sized enterprises] SMEs, notably by establishing applied research centres. Entrepreneurship should be fostered by improving the business environment, including access to non-bank finance, streamlining the insolvency regime and transfer of intellectual property rights, and upgrading the broadband network.

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Occupational licensing and non-competition agreements are two important types of labour market regulation in the United States, both covering around one fifth of all workers. While some regulation is needed to protect safety and ensure quality of services, it also creates entry barriers and reduces competition with important costs for job mobility, earnings and productivity growth. Employment opportunities for low-skilled workers and disadvantaged groups tend to be particularly affected by these barriers. The States are mainly responsible for labour market regulation and the variation across States is similar to the variation in the European Union. Harmonising requirements and scaling back occupational licensing as well as restricting the use of non-competition covenants could help to circumvent the secular decline in dynamism. However, attempts to reform often face stiff opposition from associations of professionals. The federal government has limited influence, but can in some cases help by shifting the burden from workers to meet regulatory requirements onto States and employers to show that high and differing regulatory standards are needed.

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This paper discusses the returns to education and provides an overview of the structure of the education system in Poland. It then examines its organisation and performance, focusing on each level of education and training in turn. The paper highlights the key developments in the Polish educational system since 1990: its response to the rapid decline in school enrolments now moving through the system, following a sharp fall in birth rates; the introduction of a decentralised organisational structure of management into primary and secondary education in the late 1990s; and a four-fold increase in tertiary education enrolments over the past 15 years, much of which is in hundreds of new private-sector institutions and so raising questions of quality control and finance. Participation in adult training is found to be low and appears to be concentrated among already relatively highly-educated groups, thus not having much impact on improving the human capital of older and less skilled groups. The authors suggest that the private returns to education have probably increased over the past 15 years. In 1993, 76 per cent of respondents to an opinion poll felt that education was worthwhile and in 2004 this number had grown to 93 per cent. During the same period, the returns to education also appear to have increased, at least on measuring the differentials between the earnings and employment rates of people with different levels of education and in different professions. The paper concludes with recommendations covering general factors such as resource allocation, organisation and quality control. Show less

Australia has a dynamic labour market with high job turnover. According to the [Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia] HILDA Survey data, about one-fifth of all employees separate from their job every year, and about one fifth of those are displaced workers - laid off for economic reasons. Using multivariate probit regression we find that men, older workers and workers with less than secondary education tend to be displaced more often. In certain industries, such as construction and manufacturing, the incidence of displacement has been higher over the last fifteen years. Workers with lower tenure and casual employees also face a higher probability of displacement. However, a very high proportion - close to 80 per cent - of displaced workers find a new job within two years. Among certain groups of workers, the share finding new employment is significantly lower: women, older workers, and less educated workers, workers who had a casual job and part-time workers. However, not all groups search for a job after being displaced. We find evidence that women, older workers and workers in low-skilled occupations are quite likely to exit the labour force following displacement.

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The interaction between health and employment is the subject of numerous research studies and can be understood as a two-way causal relationship: employment has an impact on health and health has an impact on employment. This study reviews, in European countries, empirical papers dealing with this two-way causal relationship. The economic literature on the relationships between employment and health is sparse, compared to the vast number of studies published in other fields such as epidemiology, sociology and psychology. A better knowledge of the complex interactions between work and health is necessary to promote the prevention of occupational health risk, through the quest for new forms of organization that are less harmful for health.

The paper is organized as follows: section two deals with methodological issues around employment and health measurements; section three describes the main results relative to the effect of employment on health; section four presents the European literature relative to the healthy worker effect; and the final section provides a discussion of policy issues related to health at work.

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Despite significant increases in spending on child care and education during the last decade, [OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment] PISA scores suggest that educational performance remains static, uneven and strongly related to parents’ income and background. Better educational performance could improve labour market outcomes, raise growth, lower the consequences of a disadvantaged background and increase social mobility. Given the austere fiscal outlook, improvements have to come from higher efficiency rather than further spending. More focused pre-school spending on disadvantaged children could improve skill formation. Better-targeted funding for disadvantaged children combined with strengthened incentives for schools to attract and support these students would help raising educational outcomes. The government is increasing user choice by expanding the academies program and introducing Free Schools, but needs to closely follow effects on fair access for disadvantaged children. The impact of increasing user choice on educational outcomes is uncertain, but the government should experiment with proscribing the use of residence criteria in admission to local government maintained schools in some local authorities. Reforms to increase supply flexibility should be pursued. All government funded schools should enjoy the same freedom in hiring and wage setting to level the playing field across different school types. To better gauge progress and inform policy makers, schools and parents on educational outcomes, additional performance measures should be developed and steps taken to lessen the reliance on grades in performance management. Insufficient supply of high-quality vocational programs and tertiary education study places hamper human capital formation and growth. Stabilising and simplifying vocational education by more focus on high quality apprenticeships would support participation. The government needs to find efficient measures to raise participation especially among children from low income families to replace the abolished educational maintenance allowance. Further reforms to funding of higher education could lower taxpayers’ costs and help finance a needed expansion in the sector.

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Unemployment in South Africa is extremely high and unevenly distributed, being concentrated among young less-skilled blacks. The legacies of apartheid can explain part of the increase in labour supply and the inability of the economy to absorb it which produced the extreme levels of unemployment, but more could have been done to unwind those legacies and other policies and institutions have contributed to the dysfunction of the labour market. Notably, improvements in product market regulation to strengthen competition could help expand formal sector employment. Changes in municipal laws and regulations to ease migration and facilitate informal employment are also likely to be particularly important. Improving the implementation of employment protection legislation could also help reduce unemployment. Efforts to tackle crime could help reduce the brain drain and attract skilled immigrants, which would likely boost demand for less-skilled workers via complementarities. Over the longer term, improvements in basic education will be key to reducing the excess supply of less-skilled workers.

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