Highlights: • Ambitious green policies that improve environmental quality while maintaining economic growth do not have to harm overall employment—if they are well implemented. • Green policies can achieve job creation in a number of ‘green’ economic sectors and through a transition of the economy towards more labour-intensive services sectors, while job destruction especially occurs in ‘brown’ sectors whose activities get replaced by green sectors. The knock-on effects on employment in other sectors can also be significant. • The use of government revenues from environmental tax reform for lowering labour taxes, mitigating undesirable distributional consequences and funding education and training programs can be crucial in achieving positive overall employment outcomes from green policies. • Well-functioning labour markets are important to achieve a smooth transition and reintegrate workers who lose their jobs. • Existing labour market policy tools are largely sufficient but can be applied more effectively. Education and training systems that prepare workers for future labour demand needs are especially important to smooth the transition. Special attention should also be paid to regions with a high share of workers in ‘brown’ sectors. • Further research is required to quantify all employment dimensions of green policies, not least with respect to within-sector firm level effects, circular economy policies and the broad interactions with socioeconomic trends.

This joint OECD-ILO report provides a comparative analysis of case studies focusing on improving skills use in the workplace across eight countries. The examples provide insights into the practical ways in which employers interact with government services and policies at the local level. They highlight the need to build policy coherence across employment, skills, economic development and innovation policies, and underline the importance of ensuring that skills utilisation is built into policy development thinking and implementation. Skills utilisation concerns the extent to which skills are effectively applied in the workplace to maximise workplace and individual performance. It involves a mix of policies including work organisation, job design, technology adaptation, innovation, employee-employer relations, human resource development practices and business-product market strategies. It is often at the local level that the interface of these factors can best be addressed.

Recent labour market trends have prompted countries to reflect on whether existing systems of labour legislation, lifelong learning, social protection, taxation and collective bargaining are still fit for purpose. While in some cases they are, in others, policies may need to be adapted to ensure protection for vulnerable workers and to prevent abuse, and to ensure that firms that comply with the regulations are not unduly disadvantaged. This report provides a snapshot of the policy actions being taken by countries in response to growing diversity in forms of employment, with the aim of encouraging peer learning where countries are facing similar issues. The findings are based on a survey by the OECD and the European Commission of 44 Ministries of Labour (or the ministry with responsibility for labour market policy) in OECD, EU and G20 countries, carried out primarily between June and August in 2018.

The WISE database provides a statistical snapshot of skills development in 214 countries. It contains 64 indicators in five broad areas: contextual factors, skill acquisition, skill requirements, skill mismatch, economic and social outcomes. While not all of these indicators are available for every country, the database can be used to examine the skills challenges and performance of each country from a comparative perspective.

The future of work offers unparalleled opportunities, but also significant challenges. Globalisation, technological progress and demographic change are having a profound impact on society and labour markets. It is crucial that policies help workers and society at large to manage the transition with the least possible disruption, while maximising the potential benefits.

Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators is the authoritative source for information on the state of education around the world. It provides data on the structure, finances and performance of education systems in the 35 OECD and a number of partner countries. With more than 100 charts and tables, Education at a Glance 2018 imparts key information on the output of educational institutions, the impact of learning across countries, and worldwide access, participation and progression in education. It also investigates the financial resources invested in education, as well as teachers, the learning environment and the organisation of schools. The 2018 edition presents a new focus on equity in education, investigating how progress through education and the associated learning and labour market outcomes are impacted by dimensions such as gender, the educational attainment of parents, immigrant background, and regional location. The publication introduces a chapter dedicated to Target 4.5 of Sustainable Development Goal 4 on equity in education, providing an assessment of where OECD and partner countries stand in providing equal access to quality education at all levels. Finally, new indicators are introduced on equity in entry to and graduation from tertiary education, and the levels of decision-making in education systems. New data are also available on the statutory and actual salaries of school heads, as well as trend data on expenditure on early childhood education and care and the enrolment of children in all registered early childhood education and care settings. More data are available on the OECD educational database.

The Netherlands today is prosperous, but its future success is not assured. The Netherlands owes its success in no small part to actions it has taken in the past to develop a highly skilled population. Given the profound economic and social transformation that the Netherlands is currently undergoing, skills will be even more important for success in the future. The Dutch education system and the skills of the Dutch population are strong overall. Therefore, many of the opportunities for further improving the skills outcomes of the Netherlands are to be found in areas of society where the government has more limited influence, such as the workplace and community. As a consequence, achieving the Netherlands’ skills ambitions will require a whole-of-society approach. The OECD Skills Strategy Diagnostic Report: Netherlands identifies the following three skills priorities for the Netherlands - fostering more equitable skills outcomes, creating skills-intensive workplaces, and promoting a learning culture. These priorities were identified through the analysis of common themes that emerged from stakeholder perspectives on the most important skills challenges facing the Netherlands, and through the OECD’s analysis of the nine skills challenges identified and examined in the report.

The capacity to manage information and solve problems using computers is becoming a necessity as ICT applications permeate the workplace, the classroom and lecture hall, the home, and social interaction more generally. The Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), was designed to measure adults’ proficiency in several key information-processing skills, namely literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments. Adults who are highly proficient in the skills measured by the survey are likely to be able to make the most of the opportunities created by the technological and structural changes modern societies are going through. Those who struggle to use new technologies are at greater risk of losing out. The results from the first round of the survey, covering 24 countries and economies, were reported in the OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey of Adult Skills. Another nine countries and economies collected data during 2014-15. This report presents the main findings for all 33 countries and economies that participated in the study over the two rounds. It finds substantial variation across countries/economies in adults’ average proficiency in the three domains assessed. More than 80 score points separate the highest- and lowest-scoring countries in literacy and numeracy, although many countries and economies score within a relatively close range of each other. Within countries and economies, proficiency scores in literacy and numeracy vary considerably: on average, 62 score points separate the 25% of adults who attained the highest and lowest scores in literacy; in numeracy, 68 score points separate those two groups. In almost all countries/economies, a sizeable proportion of adults (18.5% of adults, on average) has poor reading skills and poor numeracy skills (22.7% of adults, on average). Around one in four adults has no or only limited experience with computers or lacks confidence in their ability to use computers. In addition, nearly one in two adults is proficient only at or below Level 1 in problem solving in technology-rich environments. This adult can only use familiar applications to solve problems that involve few steps and explicit criteria, such as sorting e-mails into pre-existing folders.

Ambitious green policies that improve environmental quality while maintaining economic growth do not have to harm overall employment—if they are well implemented. Green policies can achieve job creation in a number of ‘green’ economic sectors and through a transition of the economy towards more labour-intensive services sectors, while job destruction especially occurs in ‘brown’ sectors whose activities get replaced by green sectors. The knock-on effects on employment in other sectors can also be significant. The use of government revenues from environmental tax reform for lowering labour taxes, mitigating undesirable distributional consequences and funding education and training programs can be crucial in achieving positive overall employment outcomes from green policies. Well-functioning labour markets are important to achieve a smooth transition and reintegrate workers who lose their jobs. Existing labour market policy tools are largely sufficient but can be applied more effectively. Education and training systems that prepare workers for future labour demand needs are especially important to smooth the transition. Special attention should also be paid to regions with a high share of workers in ‘brown’ sectors. Further research is required to quantify all employment dimensions of green policies, not least with respect to within-sector firm level effects, circular economy policies and the broad interactions with socioeconomic trends.