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More and more adults are earning a tertiary qualification, but not all tertiary degrees have the same value on the labour market. In general, postgraduate degrees such as master's and doctoral degrees are associated with higher employment rates and earnings than bachelor's degrees. Labour market outcomes also vary by field of education. Some fields of education differ markedly in their gender composition, reflecting the sex-typing of occupations and gender stereotypes. Graduates' field of education is closely related with their occupational choices; therefore a better understanding of gender disparities in this area can help to identify some of the mechanisms that lie behind gender differences in the labour market and beyond.

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This report was presented to the Working Party on the Information Economy (WPIE) in December 2004. It provides an overview of information and communications technology (ICT) skills and employment across OECD economies and analyses some of the impacts on economic performance. It describes a new approach to identifying the diffusion of ICTs in the economy. Two measures of ICT-skilled employment are developed. The first is a narrow measure that uses occupational data to identify ICT specialists (e.g. programmers, software developers but also cable layers). The second is a broad measure that includes those who intensively use ICTs to perform their work (both basic and advanced intensive users), as well as the specialists. These measures are calculated for the economy as a whole and also by sector. The report provides a brief review of earlier attempts to identify the presence of ICTs in the economy and describes a new measurement approach developed for the 2004 ‘OECD information technology outlook’, which attempts to capture the diffusion of ICTs throughout the economy based on the degree of their actual use. The industry rankings based on the share of ICT-skilled employment in total employment are then compared to the results of other studies that classify industrial sectors on the basis of ICT usage. Some preliminary results from the analysis relating the ICT skills measures to productivity measures are presented. The report has expanded the analysis of ICT-skilled employment from the 2004 ‘OECD information technology outlook’ and extended it to include Canada. The analysis revealed that the narrow measure of ICT specialists followed a similar pattern across countries (European Union (EU)15, US, Canada and Australia), but that the trends for broad measure of ICT-intensive users and specialists diverged. The share of broad ICTskilled employment is increasing in the EU15, but decreasing in the US, Canada and Australia. The broad ICT-skilled employment measure was also analysed at the sectoral level. Findings reveal that many business services sectors have a very large share of ICT-skilled employment (e.g. computer and related services, financial intermediation services, and research and development), as well as certain manufacturing sectors (such as manufacturing of office machinery and computers). Personal services tended to have a relatively low share. Most sectors were found to have increased their share of ICT-skilled employment somewhat, particularly those that already had a relatively large share. Show less

Across the OECD, the labour-market performance of foreign-born-adults tends to lag behind that of the native-born. Immigrants are not only more likely to be unemployed or inactive, but they also earn less and work in lower-skilled jobs. Foreign-born adults feel their skills are underutilised in some countries. This has considerable consequences for the successful socio-economic integration of immigrants. Differences in skills proficiency, language spoken and country of education explain a large part - albeit not the entirety - of these observed gaps. Policies should therefore aim to provide immigrants with effective language tuition, adult education and training programmes in order to ensure the successful integration of foreign-born workers into host economies.

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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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Southern Arizona has developed into a hub of light-based industries but ranks near the bottom third of US cities in per capita income. State funding for education is in decline, accentuated by the economic crisis, and the public good of tertiary education is under threat. In a time of financial stringency, how can the University of Arizona and community colleges preserve their existing strengths and address the needs of the diverse population? How can the region and its tertiary education institutions fuel local growth and create high quality jobs and new businesses? How can the institutions prepare for the post-crisis economy and help diversify the economy? This publication is part of a series of reviews that help mobilise higher education institutions for economic, social and cultural development of cities and regions. They analyse how the higher education system impacts upon regional and local development and bring together universities, other higher education institutions and public and private agencies to identify strategic goals and to work towards them.

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Drawing on data from two OECD sources, the Survey of Adult Skills and the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), this paper focuses on the current competencies and skill needs of teachers in relation to information and communication technology (ICT) and problem-solving skills. The paper concludes that the education sector performs well for ICT and problem-solving skills as teachers, who make up a large proportion of its workforce, tend to have better ICT and problem-solving skills than the overall population. In Japan and Korea, primary and secondary teachers are over 40 percentage points more likely than other tertiary graduates to have good skills when age is taken into account.

In a world where students must learn to navigate complex digital landscapes to succeed in the future, teachers play an important role which poses high demands on their skills and competencies. This may be why, despite their relatively high skills, more than half of lower secondary teachers expressed the need for professional development in ICT skills for teaching.

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The OECD annual report on jobs and employment in OECD countries reviews recent trends, policy developments, and prospects. The 2021 edition of the OECD Employment Outlook [available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 145.163] focusses on the labour market implications of the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 crisis. Country notes are available for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In some countries, employers used job retention programmes to cut hours while allowing workers to keep their pay and jobs; there, it is likely that the full impact of the pandemic is yet to be felt. In others, there have been unprecedented increases in unemployment, but many workers will return to their jobs (or to new ones) as economies re-open and activity picks up.

The initial impact of the COVID-19 crisis was relatively modest in Korea due to the fast and widespread campaign of test, tracking and tracing that contributed to contain the spread of the virus. The unemployment rate in Korea started to rise from 3.4 per cent in February 2020 and reached 5.4 per cent in January 2021 due to enhanced distancing measures at the end of 2020. After that, it gradually declined to 3.8 per cent by May 2021. In Korea, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a greater impact on vulnerable groups, such as non-regular workers and young people. In 2020, the number of temporary and daily workers decreased by 6.5 per cent and 7.1 per cent respectively, while the number of regular workers increased by 2.1 per cent. The employment rate for young people (aged 15-29) also fell in 2020 by 1.3 percentage points compared to the previous year, showing the largest decline among all age groups.

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Equality impact assessments are an important framework for demonstrating due regard through considering evidence and analysis to help identify the likely positive and negative impacts that policy proposals may have on certain protected groups of consumers and to estimate whether such impacts disproportionately affect such groups. This assessment takes a summary view of the equality impacts of the changes to the apprenticeship program outlined below: (1) new incentive payments for small employers to take on a young apprentice for the first time; (2) measures to make it quicker and easier for employers to take on an apprentice, including reducing the time it takes an employer to advertise for an apprentice to one month, and stripping back any unnecessary health and safety requirements; (3) requiring apprenticeship providers to offer training in English and Maths up to the standard of a good [General Certificate of Secondary Education] GCSE to all apprentices, and publishing their progress; (4) launching a new employer-led review into the standards and quality of apprenticeships, to ensure every apprenticeship delivers professionally recognised qualifications which employers value; and (5) prioritising the efforts of the National Apprenticeship Service where apprenticeships deliver greatest value, including on younger adults, new employees, higher level qualifications and particular sectors, whilst maintaining a demand-led, all age program open to all sectors across the economy where high quality apprenticeships can be offered.

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This review looks at the framework for determining employment status and provides a snapshot of the UK labour market in 2015. In order to gain a greater understanding of some of the issues being faced, officials were asked to consider what the UK labour market looks like and suggest ways in which government could deliver a framework that strikes the correct balance between the rights of the individual and the needs of business, supporting growth and prosperity in the 21st century. The review involved discussions with a number of stakeholders and this report represents the findings of that review.

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Tertiary education policy is increasingly important on national agendas. The widespread recognition that tertiary education is a major driver of economic competitiveness in an increasingly knowledge-driven global economy has made high-quality tertiary education more important than ever. The imperative for countries is to raise higher-level employment skills, to sustain a globally competitive research base and to improve knowledge dissemination to the benefit of society. This two-volume publication provides a thorough international investigation of tertiary education policy across its many facets - governance, funding, quality assurance, equity, research and innovation, academic career, links to the labour market and internationalisation. The report presents: an analysis of the trends and developments in tertiary education; a synthesis of research-based evidence on the impact of tertiary education policies; innovative and successful policies and practices that countries have implemented; and tertiary education policy options. The report draws on the results of a major OECD review of tertiary education policy - the OECD Thematic Review of Tertiary Education - conducted over the 2004-08 period in collaboration with 24 countries around the world. Country papers from the review are indexed from TD/TNC 89.551 to TD/TNC 89.585.

Volume one is entitled ‘Special features: governance, funding, quality’ and contains the following chapters: Introduction; Setting the stage: impacts, trends and challenges of tertiary education; Setting the right course: steering tertiary education; Matching funding strategies with national priorities; Assuring and improving quality. Volume two is entitled ‘Special features: equity, innovation, labour market, internationalisation’ and contains the following chapters: Achieving equity; Enhancing the role of tertiary education in research and innovation; The academic career: adapting to change; Strengthening ties with the labour market; Internationalisation: shaping strategies in the national context; What next?: the challenges of policy implementation; Appendices: How the review was conducted; Structure of tertiary education systems in selected countries; Improving the knowledge base; Summary of policy directions.

A three-volume synthesis report was prepared for release and discussion at Tertiary Education for the Knowledge Society, an international conference to present the results of the OECD Thematic Review of Tertiary Education in Lisbon on 3-4 April 2008. This report is indexed at TD/TNC 89.577. Show less