As technology progresses, so do labour market needs. For economies today, maintaining competitiveness means that skills must adapt and keep pace.
The latest phase of the economic crisis presents a dilemma: many governments judge it necessary to enter a phase of fiscal austerity while unemployment remains intolerably high, a high risk combination. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka calls for a different way forward.
Among the employment challenges exacerbated by the economic crisis, long-term joblessness and youth unemployment are especially troubling as their effects can linger long after the job market has recovered.
Governments would do well to focus on these problems now.
The economic outlook has weakened significantly over the past six months, which is not good news for employment or the prospects of those looking for work. But action targeted on youth and the long-term unemployed can, and must, be taken.
Israel’s labour market is a reflection of the country’s complicated demographic patchwork. This brings strengths and weaknesses.
From housework and homemaking to gardening and local community work, both women and men do so-called “unpaid work” on top of their paid jobs.
Canada’s labour market was spared some of the more dramatic peaks and troughs of the economic crisis. Why?
The crisis has had a huge impact on jobs and may have changed the labour market forever. John Martin, OECD Director of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, explains the challenges facing policymakers in the years and decades ahead.
“Being unemployed is frustrating, demeaning and, at this point, frightening”. Anyone who has any doubt about the devastating effects unemployment can have will learn a lot from statements such as this one, captured in a recent survey undertaken by the John. J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University in the US.
Off to a Good Start? Jobs for Youth says that young people are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as the average worker. This is a waste of resources that today’s economies can ill afford.
Unemployment soared in the crisis, and creating jobs is now a major policy priority. But jobs alone will not be enough. A greater emphasis on skills will be needed for the recovery to last. Investing more in lifelong learning is a good way to secure one's place in the job market and contributes to business competitiveness.
Healthcare must be maintained as an essential public good
When Chile became the first South American country to join the OECD in 2010, the event was greeted as a seal on years of progress, not to mention hard work. Still, challenges remain, including in the fight against poverty, as Minister of Planning Felipe Kast explains in this interview with the OECD Observer.
Slower activity ahead?; Economy; Soundbites; Roundup; Corruption work praised; iLibrary launched; Israel joins the OECD; Secretary-General reappointed; Plus ça change...
With unemployment soaring, it may come as a surprise to learn that there’s also a shortage of qualified people to fill job vacancies. In fact, companies in Europe have around three million unfilled vacancies, says David Arkless of Manpower Inc.
A country’s education system has the potential to develop innovation skills in young people at an early age (“What a lasting recovery needs”, OECD Observer No 279, May 2010). Comments I’ve read on the topic seem to assume that business thinking starts after leaving school, say, with 16-18 year-olds.
As the world economy splutters back to life, policymakers have been focused on ending the jobs crisis. But despite the arsenal of policies aimed at assisting young people, the long-term unemployed and the unskilled, one of the most vulnerable groups of workers risks being forgotten.
Health spending rises; Round up; Soundbites; Benvenuto!; Economy; Food speculation question; Chinese flexibility welcomed; Slovenia joins the OECD; Plus ça change...
Despite signs of recovery, make no mistake: this crisis is far from over. We are in the midst of the most serious jobs crisis since the Great Depression and the economic recovery is still very weak and fragile.
Unemployment has risen sharply during the recession, and young people have been particularly hard hit. Even in good times, unemployment among 15-to-24-year-olds can be two to three times that of adults, but youth unemployment has increased much more rapidly during the crisis. In Germany, which has a successful apprenticeship programme, young people are now one and half times more likely to be unemployed than prime age workers, while in Sweden their risk is four times greater.
Unemployment in the OECD area is predicted to reach some 10% in 2010, up from about 5.6% in 2007. Men have been hit harder than women: across the OECD area, male employment has fallen by 3% since the recession started, while the decline for women stood at a tenth of that, at 0.3%. Hence the “mancession” tag bloggers and commentators have used to characterise the jobs crisis.
More women go to work today than 40 years ago, but their pay has not kept pace with men’s. Some 58% of women on average in the OECD area worked in 2008, up from 45% in 1970, ranging from 70% of women in the Nordic countries to less than 50% in Greece, Italy, Mexico and Turkey. Indeed, with fewer women staying at home, dual-earner families are now commonplace in most OECD countries; only in Japan, Mexico and Turkey are single-income families more common. However, men are often still the main earners in dual-earner families because so many women work part-time and for lower wages than their husbands. In the Netherlands, a relatively egalitarian country, 60% of women work part time, compared with 16% of men.
Income levels of sons are often influenced by the income levels of their fathers, OECD research shows. The height of each bar on the graph measures the extent to which sons’ earnings levels reflect those of their fathers. The correlation is strongest in the UK, Italy and the US, and much less so in Denmark, Australia and Norway.
Could today's jobs crisis end up scarring the hopes of an entire generation? Even in the best of times, many young people have a hard time getting a foothold in the labour market, with youth unemployment often two to three times higher than for adults. In recessions, finding work gets tougher still. Moreover, many of those young people who have work are on short-term contracts and commonly find themselves first in line when it comes to lay offs-some 35% of workers aged 15-24 in the OECD area held temporary contracts in 2008. In this recession, there is extra cause for concern.
Thanks to prompt and significant government responses to the crisis, many economies are experiencing initial signs of recovery. However, there is still much uncertainty concerning what lies ahead and unemployment is still rising in many countries. The OECD unemployment rate reached a post-war high of 8.5% in July 2009, with an OECD estimated 15 million extra out of work since the start of the crisis. In contrast, unemployment across the OECD was at a 25-year low of 5.6% in 2007.
Jobs crisis or no, it's best to invest in education. As this year's edition of Education at a Glance shows, men and women who have university-level degrees earn far more over the course of a lifetime than those who don't. In fact, men with higher education in Italy and the US can earn over US$300,000 more than their counterparts who do not have a university degree. Rewards tend to be lower for women, with Korea and Spain the exceptions.
