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The Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF), in partnership with CSIRO Climate Science Centre undertook a national 'Climate Skills Survey' of finance professionals to understand the level of skills across Australia's financial system. The survey looked at the current level of climate skills, defined as climate/climate risk-related skills, knowledge areas or competencies, in relation to existing market demand and explored barriers to increasing skills. It also investigated mechanisms that could provide the necessary upskilling.

The key conclusion from the survey is that there is currently a climate skills gap and that this gap is likely to grow unless urgent action is taken. The range of functions where climate-related and sustainable finance skills are required is diverse, from accounting through to risk management and assessment of investment opportunities. Failure to address the skills gap could impede the rapid, economy-wide decarbonisation and reallocation of capital needed to meet net zero emissions targets. The results are distilled in this report, which includes recommendations for addressing this problem and developing a sustainable finance learning ecosystem.

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Part-time participation in higher education (HE) by people already in employment potentially represents an important means of skills updating and improvement for the UK economy. In particular, combining prior work experience and part-time HE study could help to increase the supply of highly-educated people with the types of 'employability skills' that are widely sought by employers. A further attraction of this mode of skills development is that it minimises absence from work, with individuals investing their own time in study. In this context there is considerable interest in learning more about the extent to which UK employers provide support with course fees and other costs of part-time HE study - a form of support which is widespread in the United States. In this report we draw on recent surveys of part-time students and their employers in the UK in order to investigate the extent and nature of employer support for part-time HE study and the perceived advantages and disadvantages of this kind of study for the organisations concerned.

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The National Skills Task Force has been established by the Secretary of State for Education and Employment to assist him in developing a National Skills Agenda. The Task Force was asked to provide advice on the nature, extent and pattern of skill needs and shortages, including associated recruitment difficulties, how these are likely to change and what can be done to ease such problems. This paper is one of a series that has been commissioned to review and evaluate existing literature in a number of skills-related areas.

In part 1 of this paper, 'The demand and supply of intermediate level vocational skills: a review of recent trends', Lloyd discusses employer requirements for intermediate-level skills and the extent to which these skills are changing. Using existing research from survey and case studies, she addresses five issues of concern: is there any evidence for a shortage of intermediate level vocational skills?; can we identify a changing pattern of demand from employers for intermediate skills?; how are jobs at the intermediate level changing?; is there evidence of either upskilling or deskilling?; and, what factors are likely to determine the way that intermediate jobs are changing? In part 2, 'Intermediate skills and productivity - how the UK compares', Steedman examines the supply of intermediate-level skills in Britain compared to other European countries, Singapore and the United States and the importance of these skills for productivity. She analyses the skill profiles, and looks at skill stocks by sector and the links between intermediate vocational skills and productivity, providing tables from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS). Both authors conclude that there is a lack of evidence to support the view that there are widespread intermediate skill shortages. In fact, overall, there is a weak demand which reflects the number of firms that only demand low-skilled workers and a consequent weak supply. Analysis of the IALS survey confirms that the United Kingdom (UK) has a skills deficit and that, although more young people have intermediate qualifications, the increases are predominantly academic (A-level) and not vocational. They assert that policy-makers must recognise both these facts and make appropriate decisions if the UK is going to be able to compete with other countries in those markets requiring middle to high level vocational skills.

Other research reports in this series are indexed from TD/TNC 62.633 to TD/TNC 62.635 and from TD/TNC 62.637 to TD/TNC 62.651. Show less

What are the causes of low participation among unemployed adults with the fewest qualifications or skills? What programs have been developed to assist the long-term unemployed throughout Europe and how are they evolving? What types of programs have succeeded in attracting unemployed adults with few skills and qualifications? What factors encourage participation? This book draws upon a range of materials to give an account of reported experience and views from the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe on the concept of motivation in relation to education and training for unemployed people. Show less

Most high and middle-income countries showed symptoms of skill-biased technological change in the 1980s. India, a low income country, did not, perhaps because India's traditionally controlled economy may have limited the transfer of technologies from abroad. However the economy underwent a sharp reform and a manufacturing boom in the 1990s, raising the possibility that technology absorption may have accelerated during the past decade. We investigate the hypothesis that skill-biased technological change did in fact arrive in India in the 1990s using panel data disaggregated by industry and state from the Annual Survey of Industry (ASI). These data confirm that while the 1980s were a period of falling skills demand, the 1990s showed generally rising demand for skills, with variation across states. We find that increased output and capital-skill complementarity appear to be the best explanations of skill upgrading in the 1990s. Skill upgrading did not occur in the same set of industries in India as it did in other countries, suggesting that increased demand for skills in Indian manufacturing is not due to the international diffusion of recent vintages of skill-biased technologies.

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This study examines whether the likelihood of displaced workers entering postsecondary education (PSE) or choosing a new field of study after job loss varies across family types. The main finding is that, all else equal, the propensity of displaced workers to enter PSE or to choose a new field of study after job loss was fairly similar across types of family units. The types of educational programs selected and their duration also appear fairly similar across types of family units. Conditional on the tax and transfer parameters and tuition fees observed during the 2010s, this finding provides no support for the hypothesis that post-displacement PSE transitions are a 'luxury' that only certain types of families can afford.

The study also shows that: (1) displaced workers are between one and three percentage points more likely than other workers to enter PSE after job loss; (2) unattached individuals and lone parents are no less likely than dual-earner couples to enter PSE or change fields of study after job loss; (3) among dual-earner couples, spousal earnings and having children younger than 18 years are not robustly correlated with the decision to enter PSE or change fields of study after job loss; and (4) displaced women who are the main earners in dual-earner couples are more likely than others to enter PSE or change fields of study when their spouse is employed in public administration in the year before job loss.

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The National Skills Task Force has been established by the Secretary of State for Education and Employment to assist him in developing a National Skills Agenda. The Task Force was asked to provide advice on the nature, extent and pattern of skill needs and shortages, including associated recruitment difficulties, how these are likely to change and what can be done to ease such problems. This paper is one of a series that has been commissioned to review and evaluate existing literature in a number of skills-related areas.at has been commissioned to review and evaluate existing literature in a number of skills-related areas.

The author begins this paper by attempting to define both the size of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the importance of their contribution to the United Kingdom (UK) economy. Considerable changes within the sector have made precise definitions difficult. These include sectoral shifts, economic uncertainty, technological change, organisational changes, and public policy which has encouraged the growth of small businesses. Johnson analyses national evidence on SMEs and skills, and includes tables of selected results from the Skills Needs in Britain (SNIB) studies and the Cambridge SBRC surveys. The third section deals with research findings on management skills, general workforce skills, graduate and higher level skills and the use and impact of policy initiatives. The last section presents key findings and the implications for future skills needs. Johnson comments on the incidence and types of training provision, the position and influence of owner/managers, and the suggested policy directions for skills and training initiatives within the SME sector, although the heterogeneous nature of the SME sector makes it difficult to provide categorical statements about the findings.

Other research reports in this series are indexed from TD/TNC 62.633 to TD/TNC 62.644 and from TD/TNC 62.646 to TD/TNC 62.651. Show less

[The authors] study how the skill distribution for an economy responds to changes in the skill premium induced by trade integration. Using administrative data for Denmark (1993-2012) and Portugal (1993-2011), [the authors] conduct a two-step analysis. In the first step [the authors] predict the skill premium changes which are triggered by exogenous trade shocks. In the second step [the authors] estimate the impact of such changes on the skill distribution. The main results for Denmark show that both the average and the standard deviation of skills increase as a result of trade integration. For Portugal [the authors] find instead that the impact of trade mediated by skill premium changes is negligible and not statistically significant. [The authors] provide a theoretical intuition to rationalize both sets of results.

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There are an estimated nine million working aged adults in England (more than a quarter of adults aged 16-65) with low literacy or numeracy skills or both. This reflects England's overall performance in the Survey of Adult Skills - around average for literacy, but well below average for numeracy relative to other OECD countries in the Survey (OECD, 2013). These nine million people struggle with basic quantitative reasoning or have difficulty with simple written information. They might, for example, struggle to estimate how much petrol is left in the petrol tank from a sight of the gauge, or not be able to fully understand instructions on a bottle of aspirin. Here they are referred to as 'low-skilled'. Weak basic skills reduce productivity and employability, damage citizenship, and are therefore profoundly implicated in challenges of equity and social exclusion. This report explores the factors behind these findings, and proposes policy solutions.

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The study examines the extent to which disaggregated training variables are related to technological upgrading, in the context of a middle-income developing country trying to manage its integration into the global economy. For a developing country, successful integration into the global economy requires that local manufacturing firms are able to competitively restructure, as a precondition for survival and long-term growth. Consequently, skills and technological upgrading are crucial in raising the international competitive advantage of local firms. Enterprise-provided training is one means that can be used by local firms to continuously upgrade their knowledge bases, increase their international competitiveness, and enhance employment growth over time. This paper uses South Africa as a case study, to demonstrate how economic reform measures can expose skills deficiencies in the manufacturing sector and lead to an increase in capital intensity of the sector. Exposure of skills deficiencies, in turn, raises the importance of skill-upgrading through schooling and training of existing workforce. Despite a couple of studies on the evolution of the labour market in South Africa, no previous research has explicitly examined the relationship between technological upgrading and disaggregated training/learning variables at the firm level. This paper aims to fill that gap by focusing on disaggregated enterprise-based training efforts. The study uses the Human Capital theoretical framework to answer the main research question: Which disaggregated learning variables (i.e., on-the-job or off-the-job training offered to different occupational groups) are significantly associated with technological upgrading? The study raises possible issues of heterogeneity in returns to training offered to different occupational groups in the context of technological-upgrading. On the other hand, technological upgrading may not necessarily always disadvantage all unskilled workers. Possible policy implications of research findings are outlined.

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