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This report examines skill trends in 24 OECD countries over the past several decades. The skill measures used include broad occupation groups, country-specific direct measures of skill requirements from international surveys, and direct skill measures from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) database applied to both United States and European labour force surveys. Each kind of data has its own strengths and limitations, but they tell a consistent story.

The U.S. economy is very dynamic - with firms entering, exiting, expanding, or contracting at all times. More competitive firms grow and replace less-competitive ones. This dynamic process is an important source of productivity growth and sustained economic prosperity in modern economies. New and young firms play an outsized role in this productivity-enhancing dynamic process, and in net job creation. But, recent trends point to sustained declines in business dynamism and in entrepreneurship across a broad range of sectors in the U.S. economy. While the causes and implications of this development are still being uncovered, it may suggest a lower growth economy and standards of living than otherwise would have been. We examine how these trends apply to the U.S. high-tech sector - defined here as the group of industries with very high shares of workers in the STEM occupations of science, technology, engineering, and math. Our findings show that the recently documented secular declines in business dynamism that occurred broadly across the U.S. economy during the last couple of decades also occurred in the high-tech sector in the post-2000 period. As part of this decline in dynamism, we find indicators of a slowdown in entrepreneurship in the high-tech sector in the post-2000 period. This slowdown in the high-tech sector may be especially problematic for all the reasons stated above. High-tech firms also play an outsized role in income, employment, and productivity growth overall and are generally focused on the types of cutting-edge technologies that can drive sustained economic growth. This sector typically is viewed as very entrepreneurial, but we document a pronounced slowdown in such activity in the post-2000 period.

Business dynamism plays an important role in job creation and productivity growth in the United States. Business start-ups are an important contributor to that dynamism. Start-ups contribute disproportionately to job creation but are very heterogeneous in terms of productivity. The subsequent “up-or-out” dynamic of young businesses is an important source of job and productivity growth: exiting young businesses are of very low productivity, and the surviving young businesses exhibit rapid growth with above average productivity. The United States shows signs of becoming less dynamic over time—exhibiting a slower pace of reallocation with an accompanying slower pace of job creation from business start-ups. The recent recession saw the lowest overall rate of gross job creation and job creation from start-ups since at least 1980. Job creation for small (young) businesses took an especially large hit in the recession and has been very slow to recover. An open question is whether the observed decline in dynamism exhibited by U.S. businesses will have adverse consequences for U.S. innovation, job, and productivity growth in the future. The fundamental impulse that keeps the capital engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production and transportation, the new markets…. [The process] incessantly revolutionizes from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact of capitalism

The surest way to raise workers’ incomes is to create high-quality jobs. Historically, these have been found in manufacturing, but jump-starting job growth in manufacturing is no easy task for policymakers or the private sector. Trouble in the Making? The Future of Manufacturing-Led Development aims to help policymakers and business leaders envision new approaches to promoting manufacturing-led development. Focusing on the impacts of new technologies and shifting patterns of globalization, the book recognizes that “business as usual” will not succeed in promoting manufacturing-led job growth in developing countries. However, it makes the case that wealth-generating, job-creating opportunities can indeed be seized. Success requires new approaches to promoting manufacturing that consider each economy’s competitiveness, capabilities, and connectedness, within the context of ever-shifting international trade patterns, marketplace demands, and financial strengths.

This paper investigates whether more general education reduces the risk of future unemployment by examining individuals' labor market experiences during the Great Recession (2008-2010). To estimate the causal impact of differences in educational content, I exploit a reform in Sweden in the 1990s which prolonged vocational programs in upper secondary school and gave them a considerably larger general content. The research design takes advantage of variation across regions and over time in the implementation of a large-scale pilot which preceded the reform. I find no evidence that having attended a longer and more general program reduced the risk of experiencing unemployment during the 2008-2010 recession. Among students with low GPAs from compulsory school, attending a pilot program seems instead to have led to an increased risk of unemployment. This pattern is strongest among male students and the effect is likely to be explained by the increased dropout rate which resulted from the change of the programs.

The UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) is responsible for two innovative, strategic skills investment funds: the Employer Investment Fund (EIF) and Growth and Innovation Fund (GIF). The purpose of the funds is to foster the development of sustainable training infrastructure designed to increase employer investment in skills and address skill needs on a sector basis. This study was aimed at forecasting the costs and potential benefits of the investments. Overall, the study indicates that the investments have the potential to deliver a significant level of benefits and achieve relatively strong value for money.

What images does “the future of work” conjure up for you? In his 1930 essay, Economic possibilities for our grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes foretold a future of “technological unemployment” and 15-hour workweeks.1 We’ve long since given up on early 20th-century utopian visions of a leisure society in which machines do almost everything for us. But there’s no question that what we actually do these days is changing fast, and will continue to change. Navigating the future of work Can we point business, workers, and social institutions in the same direction? By John Hagel, Jeff Schwartz, and Josh Bersin Illustration by Tim Marrs

The main purpose of this literature review is to bring together relevant research in order to contextualize the Brookfield Institute’s broader State of Digital Literacy in Canada study. While scoping out Canadian policy texts and existing programs, it also draws on international research, best practices, and the work of digital literacy experts globally to define digital literacy, the skills it comprises, as well as its importance. These sources have pulled mainly from educational and pedagogical research, work on technology and the economy, as well as a variety of policy papers, reports, recommendations, and studies.

The authors study the probable effects of automated vehicles (AVs) on U.S. workers, and how these effects can be managed. They offer simulations and scenarios of crucial impacts and recommend policies to mitigate unfortunate impacts while also setting an agenda for policy research. The authors hope to motivate policymakers and interested parties to act now to reduce the negative effects on workers.