Boosting skills essential for tackling joblessness: OECD

Boosting skills essential for tackling joblessness: OECD

Countries with greater inequality in skills proficiency also have higher income inequality

According to the OECD Skills Outlook 2013, countries with greater inequality in skills proficiency also have higher income inequality. The low-skilled are more likely than others to be unemployed have poor health and earn much less. According to the survey, success in adult life can be predicted with high quality initial education which should be combined with flexible, skills-oriented learning opportunities throughout life.

Snapshot of the Skills Outlook 2013-

Gap between skills and educational qualifications-- The Survey revealed large differences in some cases between a person’s actual skill levels and their educational qualifications.

Impact of social background varies-- Social background has a strong impact on skills in some countries. The children of parents with low levels of education in some countries have much weaker reading skills than their peers with better educated parents.

Economic and social impact of skills-- On average, the median hourly wage of workers scoring at the top levels (levels 4 & 5) on the literacy scale is 61% higher than that of workers scoring at or below Level 1 with this difference varying widely in different countries. Adults with low skills are also more likely to place less trust in others and feel less civically engaged compared with the highly skilled.

Progress across generations-- Some countries have made impressive progress over recent decades in equipping more people with better literacy and numeracy skills. However in other countries, the literacy and numeracy skills of young people entering the labour market are no better than those leaving for retirement.

Adult learning-- The highly skilled were on average three times more likely to take part in further training than the low skilled.

Challenges for immigrants-- Immigrants performed worse than the native-born, however, the skills proficiency improves with length of stay in the host country.