Skills for employability, economic growth and innovation: monitoring the relevance of education and training systems

The goal of this report is the contribution to the development of indicators on employability in the updated strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training until 2020. Moreover, the following analysis could serve as useful input to the ‘New Skills for New Jobs’ initiative of the Commission which tries to assess the crucial skill needs until 2020. As a network of education economists we focus on different micro- and macroeconomic factors of employability that can be affected by Education and Training (E&T) systems. In the second Section we provide our idea of a concept of employability which serves as a basis for the whole analysis within this report. Based on this concept we begin in Section three by studying the general role of educational quality and quantity in affecting employability. In Section four we examine several sub-dimensions of employability, first from a microeconomic perspective. This analysis of the individual transition from education/training to work - if possible analyzed by different levels of education and field of study - aims to identify the crucial factors leading to successful employability in terms of our interpretation of this concept. We integrate different patterns in [European Union] EU Member States and include both the transition to work of the youth, but also the individuals who are already part of the labour force. In Section five we change to the macro view and analyze the association between employability and economic growth, channelled by the stock of cognitive skills. Section six gives a short overview on external institutional determinants affecting employability. Based on our evidence, in Section seven we recommend specific, feasible indicators and benchmarks that could be used to monitor the crucial factors of employability until 2020, complemented by information on data that could be used for the monitoring process in Section eight. Section nine concludes.

Excerpt from publication. Show less