This report provides a road map for businesses interested in increasing their investments in preparing young people to meet current and future demand for a skilled global workforce.

The Design and Make pilot was an action research project conducted in the Living Skills Unit of the Adelaide Women’s Prison in 2018/2019, funded by the South Australian Department for Correctional Services. It involved designers, artists and other experts through the University of South Australia’s Match Studio who worked with women at the Adelaide Women’s prison. Enabled by staff within the Life Skills Unit at AWP, Match Studio applied design thinking processes to work with a group of women to develop a product prototype that can be produced in prison and sold to the public. This project piloted one of the recommendations within Match Studio’s Inside-Out proposal (2017), by the integrating the opportunity for prison industry workers to contribute to the design of the products they produce thus, extending existing prison industries and skills development programs across South Australia’s prisons. The Design and Make pilot project successfully achieved the four specific outcomes identified in the original grant application to the Department for Correctional Services. Develop and enhance the entrepreneurial skills and pro-social networks of program participants. Co-design a product/s with program participants and create a prototype that could be taken to market. Develop a brand concept for prison-made products that can be sold to the public. Create an evidence base to guide future Design and Make projects that could also be replicated in other DCS sites. The pilot applied participatory action research, intended to inform and document a replicable and sustainable model of operational procedures, workshop activities and resources and evidence gathering, to support the development and deployment of a Design and Make inspired brand, and workshop program model, across multiple DCS prisons.

Business Services is a broad sector that groups together a collection of job roles that facilitate effective business operations across the economy. These Business Services workers provide professional assistance to businesses in roles including compliance, conveyancing, human resources, information management, marketing, project management and work health and safety. Approximately 1.6 million individuals are employed in Business Services job roles, representing 13 per cent of Australian jobs. This illustrates the importance of this sector to the Australian economy.1 The Business Services (BSB) Training Package provides the competency standards for this wide range of job roles, as well as for a range of transferable skills that are required for workers in all sectors. Over the next five years, employment in Business Services job roles is expected to grow almost 3 per cent.2 This minimal growth (less than 1 per cent each year) reflects of the fact that some jobs roles are forecast for stronger growth (such as Human Resource Managers), and others forecast to contract (such as Project Administrators). The key drivers behind these changes are explored in the remainder of this report. The Business Services Industry Reference Committee (IRC) and PwC’s Skills for Australia work to ensure that the competency standards within the BSB Training Package are fit for purpose and serve the sector’s needs. Projects currently underway within the BSB Training Package are Technical Skills (for Legal Services; Conveyancing; Human Resources; Audit and Compliance; Information Management; and Marketing), Business Enterprise Skills (for the development of transferable skills that underpin all roles in the Business Services sector) and Work Health and Safety. Given that this scope of ongoing work means all elements of the Training Package will be reviewed between 2016-17 and 2019-20, there is no identified need for further work and this Industry Skills Forecast and Proposed Schedule of Work does not propose any further projects.

This is a Social Return on Investment (SROI) report focuses on the impact of the project entitled “ICT For Youth Employability”, run by Kampabits and supported by COL. Kampabits is a Ugandan youth-based organization that uses ICT multimedia creatively to improve the lives of less privileged youth from the non-formal settlement. The purpose of this project is to improve the livelihoods of the youth from informal settlements in Kampala (Uganda) by increasing their employability through the development of advanced ICT skills.

We know the future of work is coming. Technology is reshaping our world and changing how businesses create and capture value. Workers know they need to adapt. The skills required today won’t be the same tomorrow. We’re already starting to feel this impact – and it’s only set to accelerate. Yet we’re still not moving quickly enough. Australia faces a critical moment to define the future. If we get it right, we could gain a $36 billion annual increase to national income by 2030. To achieve it, we need a path beyond the skills gap. It rests on governments, businesses and the education sector working together and supporting Australians as they enhance their skills. In a world moving faster, we must reshape education as a lifelong experience, allowing workers to engage with learning how, when and where they want. Prior experience and knowledge must be recognised, so value is captured and future learning is incentivised. A collaborative effort is required to encourage continuous learning and development and upskill the workforce at the scale needed to respond to the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Download the report to explore the research findings and Deloitte's four recommendations on how education providers, employers and governments can act today to close the skills gap.

The research suggests that while the outlook for the Creative Industries is bright; the sector faces a number of pressing challenges relating to talent and diversity that if unaddressed threaten to undermine future success. Some of these challenges relate to the nature of work and working practices in the sector; others to the way in which we value and develop creativity and creative skills. This includes issues that are more immediate or short-term in nature, alongside challenges that are deep-rooted and represent longer-term shift. In total the report identifies nine pressing skills and diversity challenges. As might be expected given the diverse range of activities that comprise the creative economy, some of these challenges are more distinct to particular parts of the creative sector. Similarly, in areas where policy has been devolved (such as education) the picture varies across the UK nations. The research has sought to acknowledge these differences, while also developing a coherent and compelling narrative to help shape better policy and practice relating to skills, talent and diversity in the creative industries. The synthesis and scoping exercise also aimed to take an objective view on the current evidence base pertaining to these issues. It suggests there is already a vast array of research and analysis from academia and the wider research community, alongside insights and evidence compiled by wider stakeholders in the arts, culture and creative industries including sub-sector and occupational trade bodies, Government in each of the devolved nations and others. It also, however, identifies a number of information failures and thematic evidence gaps. These gaps provide steer to where the PEC can add greatest value in enhancing insight and understanding of these issues. The report concludes by articulating future research priorities for the PEC’s work in this area, while welcoming the potential for collaborative working with others in the industry that share these research interests.

Underlying wage growth has fallen short of what would be consistent with an economy operating with little or no slack. While many factors could explain this weakness, the availability of additional labour resources from informal (“gig”) work—not fully captured in standard measures of employment and hours worked—may play a role. We investigate this possibility through the Bank of Canada’s Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations (CSCE) by documenting the characteristics and size of such working arrangements. We find that just under one-third of Canadians participate in this type of work, and this participation is often consistent with labour market slack. Just over one-third of respondents who take part in informal work do so as a result of weak economic conditions, and over half would switch their hours worked for hours in formal employment with no increase in pay. Part-time workers, youth and people in provinces with historically high unemployment rates were most likely to participate in informal employment. A portion of these workers would not be considered part of the labour force by standard labour market measures due in part to the irregularity of their work schedules. Accounting for these workers could boost participation rates by 2–3 percentage points. Moreover, the magnitude of labour supply from such work that could become available to the formal sector is sizable. It amounts to roughly 700,000 full-time equivalent jobs or 3.5 per cent of the labour force on average over the third and fourth quarters of 2018. This additional margin of labour market supply may be contributing to reducing wage pressures.

Collective bargaining and workers' voice are often discussed in the past rather than in the future tense, but can they play a role in the context of a rapidly changing world of work? This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the functioning of collective bargaining systems and workers' voice arrangements across OECD countries, and new insights on their effect on labour market performance today. The publication provides a detailed review of existing collective bargaining institutions and workers' voice arrangements. It analyses the role of these institutions for employment, wages, labour market inclusiveness, as well as non-monetary aspects of job quality. The publication also discusses how collective bargaining can be mobilised to address emerging challenges in the labour market, and identifies the type of government intervention that may be required to do this. The report provides a resource for policy makers, trade unions and employers' organisations interested in understanding how collective bargaining and workers' voice can be used to complement public regulation in shaping ever-changing labour markets.

Among the millions of asylum seekers who recently arrived in OECD countries, the majority are young people who may be able to take advantage of vocational education and training (VET) opportunities to help them enter skilled employment. This report provides advice to governments and other stakeholders who are seeking to use VET to promote integration, in particular for young humanitarian migrants. While the study draws particularly on policy and practice observed in Germany, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland, it also highlights other international practices. The report focuses on the main channels through which migrants succeed in VET. It is essential that migrants are fully informed about the opportunities VET provision offers and that they have access to high quality preparatory programmes enabling access to upper-secondary VET. Once in such provision, targeted support should help them to complete VET programmes successfully. OECD countries are putting in place innovative measures to achieve better outcomes for both migrants and for economies as a whole. Ultimately this report argues that VET systems can become stronger, more flexible and more inclusive, when working better for all students, including those with diverse and vulnerable backgrounds.