This report presents the results of a detailed review of evidence and policy relating to the factors that influence the engagement of the individual in skills development. It incorporates a broad range of formal and informal learning activities, delivered in a range of institutional settings and through different media, including work-based, classroom based, distance learning and community-based learning. The review is deliberately broad in its focus, drawing on evidence and policy relating to people in different positions within the labour market - in or out of work, new entrants into employment, younger and older workers, people with and without qualifications and/or with higher and lower skills. However, a key focus for the research was the barriers and factors affecting access to skills development opportunities among lower skilled and lower qualified people. The review was undertaken by WM Enterprise and the Employment Research Institute, Edinburgh Napier University for the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UK Commission). The evidence review comprised an overview of the available statistical data for the UK and – where available – constituent countries, and a review of studies that have examined the factors that appear to influence the individual’s decision as to whether to undertake skills development activities. Building on this evidence review, the research team brought together the findings of studies that have evaluated the impact on individual participation in skills development of a range of policies that have been implemented in the UK and/or constituent countries from 1998 onwards. A limited international policy review was also undertaken, focused on six countries identified in consultation with expert commentators.

‘Gig’ or platform-based work represents one of the most recent, highly publicized labour market trends. Attributed to the increased demand for flexibility on the part of employers (Eurofound, 2015a), better labour market efficiency (IOE, 2016) and, in some cases the desire for greater flexibility on the part of workers (De Stefano, 2016), gig and platform-based work is one type of non-standard work facilitated through technology and digital markets, on-demand. Despite its relatively small size (Farrell and Grieg, 2016) the gig economy has the potential to rapidly change the way work is organized and performed, to alter the content and quality of jobs, and to reshape industries. This paper examines challenges to freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining for workers in the gig economy and explores the broad range of strategies that gig-economy workers are using to build collective agency, and to promote effective regulation of gig work.

The purpose of this quantitative study was to describe the non-credit student population and explore the motivations and economic benefits for those who participated in non-credit workforce training programs at Kirkwood Community College, a large urban community college in Iowa. These non-credit students were enrolled in one of three vocational program areas: health care, business and information technology, or industrial technology. This study employed descriptive and multivariate statistics to determine whether investment in non-credit workforce training programs realized economic benefits. Findings are shared in the following categories: non-credit student characteristics, program classification enrollment patterns, non-credit student educational goals, and economic indicator patterns. By sharing a fundamentally new methodology for investigating the economic value positions of non-credit students completing workforce training programs, this study may inform future studies not only for Kirkwood Community College, but for other community colleges as well. Suggestions are made for additional research centered upon non-credit student populations and non-credit workforce training programs.

Millions of Canadians might lose their jobs to automation in the next decade. Hundreds of thousands of others could see their full-time positions replaced with short-term, temporary gigs. What will happen to the people currently holding these jobs? Will they end up cycling through unemployment benefits, drawing down their personal assets and surviving on social assistance? Will they have access to robust, effective training to re-skill and upgrade their skills for new opportunities? What if they require access to medicine or mental health services, or their ability to afford housing diminishes? How long will it take them to re-enter the labour market as new tasks and types of jobs emerge, and will their new roles make them part of the ever-expanding precariously employed workforce? These are vital questions that Canadian governments must start grappling with today. Autonomous vehicles are already on the road, robo-advisors are dispensing financial counsel and even lawyers and reporters are starting to see automation take over routine functions. The role of digital sharing economy platforms in creating micro-tasks that offer more supplemental income opportunities, but less permanence and security must also be considered as a key part of the technological wave disrupting labour patterns. This report argues that prevailing economic and labour market trends combined with emerging technological factors are creating a growing number of workers with little or no attachment to Canada’s social architecture. Absent transformational policy change to recognize the new world of work, Canada’s social policies and programs will prove woefully inadequate to sufficiently insure enough people to meet the challenges ahead.

Millions of Canadians might lose their jobs to automation in the next decade. Hundreds of thousands of others could see their full-time positions replaced with short-term, temporary gigs. What will happen to the people currently holding these jobs? Will they end up cycling through unemployment benefits, drawing down their personal assets and surviving on social assistance? Will they have access to robust, effective training to re-skill and upgrade their skills for new opportunities? What if they require access to medicine or mental health services, or their ability to afford housing diminishes? How long will it take them to re-enter the labour market as new tasks and types of jobs emerge, and will their new roles make them part of the ever-expanding precariously employed workforce? These are vital questions that Canadian governments must start grappling with today. Autonomous vehicles are already on the road, robo-advisors are dispensing financial counsel and even lawyers and reporters are starting to see automation take over routine functions. The role of digital sharing economy platforms in creating micro-tasks that offer more supplemental income opportunities, but less permanence and security must also be considered as a key part of the technological wave disrupting labour patterns. This report argues that prevailing economic and labour market trends combined with emerging technological factors are creating a growing number of workers with little or no attachment to Canada’s social architecture. Absent transformational policy change to recognize the new world of work, Canada’s social policies and programs will prove woefully inadequate to sufficiently insure enough people to meet the challenges ahead.

In periods of accelerating technological change, incumbent workers must continuously update their skills to remain productive. In contrast, high school or college graduates recently entering the labor market often have the most up-to-date skills. We investigate how incumbent workers’ careers respond to the increasing labor supply of graduates with more technologically advanced IT skills during a period of accelerating technological change. We identify a supply shock of more technologically advanced IT-skilled graduates by exploiting a reform of a German training regulation, a reform mandating all new apprentices in a large manufacturing occupation to acquire in-depth IT skills. We use a difference-in-differences approach to analyze how this supply shock of IT-skilled workers affected the careers of incumbent workers. The results show that even young incumbents experienced long-lasting earnings losses in the form of lower wage growth after the IT-skilled graduates entered the labor market. A detailed analysis of the mechanisms suggests that incumbents on average forwent promotions and technologically advanced IT-skilled graduates crowded incumbents out of their occupation. However, despite losing their occupation, incumbents experienced relatively little unemployment during the transition period following the supply shock and on average resumed stable careers in other occupations and sectors.

This paper takes a fresh look at the causes of the rise of inequality in advanced economies, focusing on the relationship between labor market institutions and the distribution of incomes—which has featured less prominently in recent debates. We find evidence that the erosion of labor market institutions is associated with the rise of income inequality in our sample of advanced economies, notably at the top of the income distribution. Our key findings are that the decline in unionization is related to the rise of top income shares and less redistribution, while the erosion of minimum wages is correlated with considerable increases in overall inequality. There is also some evidence that the broad extension of collective agreements to non-union members is associated with higher inequality, likely owing to higher unemployment. Finally, we confirm that financial deregulation and lower top marginal tax rates are related with higher inequality.

Working nine to five for a single employer bears little resemblance to the way a substantial share of the workforce makes a living today. Millions of people assemble various income streams and work independently, rather than in structured payroll jobs. This is hardly a new phenomenon, yet it has never been well measured in official statistics—and the resulting data gaps prevent a clear view of a large share of labor-market activity. To better understand the independent workforce and what motivates the people who participate in it, the McKinsey Global Institute surveyed some 8,000 respondents across Europe and the United States. We asked about their income in the past 12 months—encompassing primary work, as well as any other income-generating activities—and about their professional satisfaction and aspirations for work in the future.

Job polarization refers to the shrinking share of employment in middle-skill, routine occupations experienced recently, over the last 35 years. Jobless recoveries refer to the slow rebound in aggregate employment following recent recessions, despite recoveries in aggregate output. We show how these two phenomena are related. First, essentially all employment loss in routine occupations occurs in economic downturns. Second, jobless recoveries in the aggregate can be accounted for by jobless recoveries in the routine occupations that are disappearing.