Browse by: "2021"

Workers’ skills are an essential asset for firms to recover from the COVID-19 shock and succeed in the twin digital and green transitions. Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) face special barriers to investing in human capital because of their size and more limited access to information and capital markets. This report identifies policies that are successful in promoting SMEs’ investment in the skills of employees, managers or entrepreneurs. A review of cost-reducing and financial support instruments is followed by an analysis of initiatives that promote innovative HR practices, a learning culture in the firm, and better co-operation among firms and with the education sector. The report describes the design and rationale of these measures as well as their advantages and limitations. It identifies a common set of features that make skill investment policies especially suitable for SMEs.

Cette version abrégée est la traduction partielle de la version anglaise de la publication The Role of Firms in Wage Inequality - Policy Lessons from a Large Scale Cross-Country Study de l’OCDE. Elle contient le résumé de la publication ainsi que le chapitre 1 du rapport, qui propose une synthèse des enseignements d’une étude internationale à grande échelle sur le rôle des entreprises dans les inégalités salariales. L’enseignement principal est qu’un tiers environ de l’ensemble des inégalités salariales peut s’expliquer par des écarts de rémunération entre entreprises plutôt que par des différences de niveau et de rendement des compétences des travailleurs. Les écarts de rémunération entre entreprises traduisent des écarts en termes de productivité et de pouvoir de fixation des salaires. Pour atténuer les fortes inégalités salariales tout en favorisant une croissance forte et durable, les politiques centrées sur les travailleurs (éducation, formation des adultes, par exemple) doivent être complétées par des politiques axées sur les entreprises.

Even though firms play a key role in shaping wages, wage inequality and the gender wage gap, firms have so far only featured to a limited extent in the policy debates around these issues. The evidence in this volume shows that around one third of overall wage inequality can be explained by gaps in pay between firms rather than differences in the level and returns to workers’ skills. Gaps in firm pay reflect differences in productivity and wage setting power. To address high wage inequality while fostering high and sustainable growth, worker-centred policies (e.g. education, adult learning) need to be complemented with firm-oriented policies. This involves notably: (1) policies that promote the productivity catch-up of lagging firms, which would not only raise aggregate productivity and wages but also reduce wage inequality; (2) policies that reduce wage gaps at given productivity gaps without limiting efficiency-enhancing reallocation, especially the promotion of worker mobility; and (3) policies that reduce the wage setting power of firms with dominant positions in local labour markets, which would raise wages and reduce wage inequality without adverse effects on employment and output.

This is the first edition of a new annual publication on public employment and management issues. This edition presents a vision of a future-ready public service workforce that is forward-looking, flexible and fulfilling to a diverse range of public employees. It provides insights to help governments achieve that vision through comparative data and analysis, a set of illustrative case studies, and expert commentary. Public service leadership and recruitment systems are fundamental inputs to renew and transform the public service. Both of these issues are highlighted and illustrated with new data from recent surveys.

Today, the global youth population is at its highest ever and still growing, with the highest proportion of youth living in Africa and Asia, and a majority of them in rural areas. Young people in rural areas face the double challenge of age-specific vulnerabilities and underdevelopment of rural areas. While agriculture absorbs the majority of rural workers in developing countries, low pay and poor working conditions make it difficult to sustain rural livelihoods. Potential job opportunities for rural youth exist in agriculture and along the agri-food value chain, however. Growing populations, urbanisation and rising incomes of the working class are increasing demand for more diverse and higher value added agricultural and food products in Africa and developing Asia. This demand will create a need for off-farm labour, especially in agribusinesses, which tends to be better paid and located in rural areas and secondary towns. It could boost job creation in the food economy provided that local food systems were mobilised to take up the challenge of higher and changing domestic demand for food.

Thriving middle classes are the backbone of democratic societies and strong economies, but in many countries, they face mounting pressure as their economic strength is eroding relative to higher-income households. Real wages and incomes for most middle-class households have grown only very slowly, and rising expenditures have been putting further pressure on living standards. Meanwhile, globalisation, digitalisation, and demographic change are eroding job opportunities for middle-skilled workers, who risk sliding into lower-paid employment. The COVID-19 crisis has accentuated socio-economic divides and may end up accelerating some of the above trends. This publication builds upon the OECD’s publications on the middle class (Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class) and social mobility (A Broken Social Elevator? How to Promote Social Mobility). It demonstrates that the German middle class is similar in size as in peer countries, but substantially smaller than it was in the mid-1990s. Lower middle‑class households face an increased risk of slipping out of the middle; meanwhile, upward mobility into the middle has declined, particularly for workers in “typical” middle-class occupations. Employment growth forecasts point to further occupational polarisation. The review proposes policy options for strengthening the employability of middle-class workers, creating good-quality, future-oriented jobs, and boosting middle‑class disposable incomes.

The Missing Entrepreneurs 2021 is the sixth edition in a series of biennial reports that examine how public policies at national, regional and local levels can support job creation, economic growth and social inclusion by overcoming obstacles to business start-ups and self-employment by people from disadvantaged or under-represented groups in entrepreneurship. It shows that there are substantial untapped opportunities for entrepreneurship in populations such as women, youth, the unemployed, and immigrants and highlights the need for more differentiated government entrepreneurship policies that respond to the specific barriers they face. The report includes an assessment of the impact of COVID-19 across these populations of entrepreneurs and the effectiveness of the policy response. It also contains thematic policy chapters on microfinance and leveraging the potential of immigrant entrepreneurs. These chapters present the range of current policy actions in EU and OECD countries and make recommendations for future policy directions. Finally, the report contains country profiles for each of the 27 EU Member States that identify for each county the major recent trends in entrepreneurship by women, youth, seniors and immigrants, the key policy issues and the recent policy actions.

L’édition 2021 des Perspectives de l’emploi de l'OCDE s’attache aux implications de la crise du COVID‑19 pour le marché du travail. Les chapitres 1 à 3 sont consacrés aux principaux défis sociaux engendrés par la crise, ainsi qu’aux mesures mises en place pour y faire face. Les chapitres 4 et 5 portent sur des problèmes structurels durables, mais examinent également leur pertinence et leurs implications au regard de la crise du COVID-19. Plus précisément, le chapitre 1 analyse les effets de la crise sur le marché du travail, avec une attention particulière pour ses conséquences sur les populations vulnérables à moyen et long terme. Le chapitre 2 propose une première évaluation du rôle joué par les dispositifs de maintien dans l’emploi dans la préservation des emplois durant la crise du COVID-19. Le chapitre 3 étudie la réponse apportée par les politiques actives du marché du travail et les services publics de l’emploi aux problématiques induites par la crise. Le chapitre 4 examine l’ampleur et les conséquences de la sous-traitance nationale sur le marché du travail en général et les professions faiblement rémunérées en particulier. Enfin, le chapitre 5 passe en revue, dans le détail, les dispositions légales et négociées régissant le temps de travail – y compris le télétravail – et fait le point sur les tendances dans les pays de l’OCDE pour différent groupes sociodémographiques.

COVID-19 and Well-being: Life in the Pandemic explores the immediate implications of the pandemic for people’s lives and livelihoods in OECD countries. The report charts the course of well-being – from jobs and incomes through to social connections, health, work-life balance, safety and more – using data collected during the first 12-15 months of the pandemic. It also takes stock of what has happened to human, economic, social and natural capital that, beyond their effects on people’s lives today, shape living conditions for years to come. It shows how COVID-19 has had far-reaching consequences for how we live, work and connect with one another, and how experiences of the pandemic varied widely, depending on whether and where people work, their gender, age, race and ethnicity, education and income levels. The report also examines the role that well-being evidence can play in supporting governments’ pandemic recovery efforts. It argues that a well-being lens can prompt policy-makers to refocus on the outcomes that matter the most to people, to redesign policy content from a more multidimensional perspective, to realign policy practice across government silos, and to reconnect people with the public institutions that serve them.

Education systems operate in a world that is constantly evolving towards new equilibria, yet short-term crises may disrupt, accelerate or divert longer-term evolutions. This Framework for Responsiveness and Resilience in Education Policy aims to support policy makers to balance the urgent challenge of building eco-systems that adapt in the face of disruption and change (resilience), and the important challenge of navigating the ongoing evolution from industrial to post-industrial societies and economies (responsiveness). Building on international evidence and analysis from over 40 education systems, this framework endeavours to establish tangible, transferable and actionable definitions of resilience. These definitions, which are the goals of the framework (Why?), are underpinned by policy components of responsiveness (What?), which define priority areas for education policy makers. Policy pointers for resilience (How?) then illustrate how policy makers can apply these components in ways that promote resilience at the learner, broader learning environment and system levels of the policy ecosystem. Finally, a transversal component looks into the people and the processes undertaken in order to reach a given purpose (Who?). The report has been prepared with evidence from the Education Policy Outlook series – the OECD’s analytical observatory of education policy.

Few small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) scale up, but these few fast growing firms are the major driver of new jobs added to OECD economies. This report helps policy makers get a grip on growth of those few SMEs by considering the transformation they undergo before, during and after their high-growth phase. Based on analysis of detailed firm-level data in a pilot project implemented for Finland, Italy, Portugal, the Slovak Republic and Spain, the report shows that SMEs in all types of places, of all ages and in all sectors have the potential to scale up. The strength of the potential does, however, vary. Getting a grip on growth of SMEs can pay important dividends as scalers contribute the majority of new jobs created by SMEs during their high-growth phase, but also continue to contribute positively to aggregate job creation and aggregate growth in turnover in the following years. A closer look at the characteristics of SMEs that scale up compared to similar “peers” that do not, shows that scaling is likely a strategic choice and includes investments and other preparatory transformation in the years preceding scaling up.

Enterprises are a key provider of education and training for adults across OECD countries. Yet, policy-makers lack a detailed understanding of how training in enterprises takes place. This report opens the black box of training and informal learning in enterprises by providing in-depth insights on: i) what training and learning opportunities enterprises provide; ii) why they provide training (or not); and iii) how they make decisions about training. It presents new evidence from 100 qualitative cases studies in five countries: Austria, Estonia, France, Ireland and Italy. The findings will assist governments and social partners in designing and implementing better policies in support of training in enterprises.

La formation tout au long de la vie est indispensable aux individus pour réussir sur des marchés du travail et dans des sociétés façonnées par les mégatendances que sont l’allongement de l’espérance de vie, les développements rapides de la technologie, la mondialisation, les migrations, les changements environnementaux et la transformation numérique, mais aussi par des chocs soudains, comme a pu l’être la pandémie de COVID-19. Dans un monde en pleine mutation et en proie à l’incertitude, la formation tout au long de la vie peut les aider à s’adapter et à développer leur résilience aux chocs externes. Si l’appui des pouvoirs publics demeure fort utile pour éviter que les changements structurels ne viennent lacérer le tissu social, la création d’une culture de la formation tout au long de la vie donne à tout un chacun les moyens de s’y adapter par lui-même. Il importe donc de réunir des éléments concrets qui nous éclairent sur les solutions les plus indiquées pour l’accompagner dans cette démarche, pour qu’il puisse « apprendre à apprendre ». La présente édition des Perspectives de l’OCDE sur les compétences 2021 est consacrée à l’étude des politiques, notamment celles qui régissent l’acquisition et l’utilisation des compétences, qui s’offrent aux pouvoirs publics pour promouvoir, avec le maximum d’efficacité, la formation de tous, tout au long de la vie. Ce rapport utilise des données quantitatives comparables pour mettre en relief le rôle décisif des facteurs socio émotionnels et de motivation dans le succès d’une formation tout au long de la vie. Primordiaux en temps ordinaire pour continuer à se former tout au long de la vie, ces facteurs ont acquis une importance accrue avec la pandémie.

Many Latin American countries have experienced improvements in income over recent decades, with several of them now classified as high-income or upper middle-income in terms of conventional metrics. But has this change been mirrored in improvements across the different areas of people’s lives? How’s Life in Latin America? Measuring Well-being for Policy Making addresses this question by presenting comparative evidence for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) with a focus on 11 LAC countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay). Spanning material conditions, quality of life, resources for future well-being, and inequalities, the report presents available evidence on well-being both before and since the onset of the pandemic, based on the OECD Well-being Framework. It also identifies priorities for addressing well-being gaps and describes how well-being frameworks are used in policy within Latin America and elsewhere around the world, providing lessons for governments on what is needed to put people’s well-being at the centre of their action. The report is part of the EU Regional Facility for Development in Transition for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Despite its rapid economic growth over the past decades, Poland’s economic inactivity rate remains above the OECD average and regional differences in labour force participation persist. This report sheds light on the drivers of economic inactivity across Polish regions and analyses them in light of both individual and structural factors associated with labour force participation. It highlights the need for more inclusive active labour market policies to help integrate the economically inactive into labour markets across Poland. A better integration of services provided by national and local institutions, as well as a strengthened role of the social economy, is needed to address the complex needs of economically inactive persons.

COVID-19 is likely to leave long-lasting effects on local labour markets. It is accelerating a pre-existing trend towards automation, as firms look even more to new technologies to pandemic proof their operations. While automation offers the opportunity to boost productivity, it can also lead to job polarisation as vulnerable workers who lose their jobs may not have the skills needed in a changing labour market. This OECD report examines the potential impacts of automation on people and places across Australia. It also sheds light on policies and programmes that can help regions and cities to prepare for the future of work.

Across OECD countries, one in seven working-age adults identifies as having a disability. Many are excluded from meaningful work and have low levels of income and active social engagement. Becoming sick or disabled often leads people to leave the labour market even if they maintain work capacity and willingness to work. Governments and employers can help create an environment that prevents sickness and disability, promotes return-to-work and enables persons with disabilities to thrive in their job. The COVID-19 pandemic and its toll on physical and mental health has made the creation of an enabling environment more important than ever. This report proposes policy recommendations to the Irish government to improve the participation of persons with disabilities. Ireland has one of the highest disability employment gaps in OECD countries. Disability employment policy has seen significant improvement in the past decade but the reforms have not produced the desired results. This report shows that engaging employers is critically important to getting and keeping persons with disabilities in work. It also highlights the importance of further structural change and accessible and sufficiently resourced public employment and adult learning services to create a labour market that works for all – including for persons with disabilities.