Documents Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris 1 359 results

"Labour shortages have reached historically high levels over the past decade. While recent labour market adjustments have eased some of this tightness, several sectors continue to struggle with significant shortages. This persistent issue can hinder productivity growth, exacerbate supply chain bottlenecks, and ultimately contribute to inflationary pressures. Against this background, this paper examines labour shortages from a distributional perspective, focusing on the wage, non-wage and sociodemographic dimensions of affected jobs. A key driver of these shortages, among others, is poor job quality, deterring workers from entering or remaining in these roles. Sectors experiencing persistently high shortages, across all countries studied, include healthcare, transportation and storage, accommodation and food, and construction, where women and migrants are overrepresented. Despite these shortages, widespread real wage improvements in these sectors have been largely absent, though some country-specific variations exist. Regarding non-wage job quality dimensions, sectors and occupations with higher shortages tend to exhibit a higher incidence of shift work. Likewise, workers in these sectors experience greater exposure to both mental and physical health risks. Based on cross-country analysis, supplemented by country-specific studies, the paper proposes areas of policy interventions. These include supporting efficient labour market reallocation, prioritising job quality improvements over simply increasing job quantity, and mitigating regional disparities in shortages."

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"This annual flagship publication provides details of taxes paid on wages in OECD countries. It covers: personal income taxes and employee contributions paid by employees, social security contributions and payroll taxes paid by employers, and cash benefits received by in-work families. It illustrates how these taxes and benefits are calculated in each member country and examines how they have an impact on household incomes. The results also enable quantitative cross-country comparisons of labour cost levels and the overall tax and benefit position of single persons and families on different levels of earnings.

The publication shows the amounts of taxes and social security contributions levied and cash benefits received for eight different family types, which vary by a combination of household composition and household type. It also presents: the resulting average and marginal tax rates (that is, the tax burden); the average tax rates (showing the part of gross wage earnings or total labour costs taken in tax and social security contributions, both before and after cash benefits); and the marginal tax rates (showing the part of a small increase of gross earnings or total labour costs that is paid in these levies)."

"The COVID-19 pandemic will cast a long shadow over the world's economies and the economic outlook is very uncertain. This issue of the OECD Economic Outlook analyses the impacts of COVID-19 on the economy and puts forward projections for output, employment, prices, fiscal and current account balances.

This issue includes a general assessment of the macroeconomic situation, a series of notes on the current policy challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic and a chapter summarising developments and providing projections for each individual country. Coverage is provided for all OECD members as well as for selected partner economies."

"The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken long-accepted beliefs about education, showing that learning can occur anywhere, at any time, and that education systems are not too heavy to move. When surveyed in May 2020, only around one-fifth of OECD education systems aimed to reinstate the status quo. Policy makers must therefore maintain the momentum of collective emergency action to drive education into a new and better normal. This Handbook provides practical guidance to support them to do just that. It presents the current state-of-play in over 40 education systems, and efforts to improve pedagogical practices in the midst of the pandemic. It proposes three key lessons and related policy pointers for the current academic term and beyond. Drawing on concrete examples of COVID-19 policy responses from primary to tertiary, as well as impactful pre-crisis policies, it addresses the policy areas of flexible learning, educator skills, and student equity. The Handbook has been prepared with evidence from the Education Policy Outlook series – the OECD's analytical observatory of education policy. As such, it benefits from a decade of policy analysis, outcomes from the Education Policy Reform Dialogues 2020, and the development of an actionable Framework for Responsiveness and Resilience in education."

"Strengthening linkages between climate change adaptation and mitigation policies can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of actions in support of a low-carbon, climate-resilient economic development. This policy paper provides an overview and a discussion of linkages, shedding light on the synergies that can be achieved as well as the trade-offs that could arise between the two policy agendas, but also across other environmental or social policy objectives. It aims at inspiring reflections of fostering linkages, especially as part of countries' ongoing discussions on designing green recovery measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This Policy Paper was prepared as a background document for the G20 Climate Stewardship Working Group discussions under the G20 Presidency of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."

"The COVID-19 crisis has amplified the urgency of addressing together the dual challenges of inequality and environmental degradation. This paper contributes to the debate on the inequalities-environment nexus by analysing the consequences of the environmental degradation and of environmental policies on four well-being dimensions: health, income and wealth, work and job quality, and safety. The analysis shows that the impacts of environmental degradation tends to be concentrated among vulnerable groups and households. At the same, the benefits and costs of environmental policies are also likely to be unevenly distributed across households. In this context, policy packages for an inclusive green transition should aim at: (i) mitigating the possible regressive impact of pricing environmental externalities, (ii) investing in human capital and upgrading skills to facilitate labour reallocation, (iii) addressing systemic inequalities with sectoral and place-based policies, (iv) ensuring efficient and responsive governance. The paper concludes by highlighting the need for an effective framework to measure progress towards a people-centred green recovery, and possible areas of future work."

"Governments around the world have adopted unprecedented policies to deal with COVID-19. This paper zooms in on business shutdowns and investigates their effectiveness in reducing mortality. We leverage highly granular death registry data for almost 5,000 Italian municipalities in a diff-in-diff approach that allows us to mitigate endogeneity concerns credibly. Our results, which are robust to controlling for a host of co-factors, offer strong evidence that business shutdowns are very effective in reducing mortality. We calculate that the death toll from the first wave of COVID-19 in Italy may have been about twice as high in their absence. Our findings also highlight that timeliness is key – by acting one week earlier, the death toll may have been reduced by up to an additional 25%. Finally, shutdowns should be targeted. Closing service activities with a high degree of interpersonal contact saves the most lives. Shutting down production activities – while substantially reducing mobility – only has mild effects on mortality."

"This brief analyses the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated government responses on the environment. It links the impact of sectoral and regional shocks to the economy until 2040 to a range of environmental pressures, including greenhouse gas emissions, emissions of air pollutants, the use of raw materials and land use change.

The short-term reductions in environmental pressures are significant; as the economy gradually recovers, emissions are projected to increase again, with growth rates going back to the pre-COVID baseline projection levels. But there is a long-term – potentially permanent – downward impact on the levels of environmental pressures of 1-3%, with stronger effects for pressures related to capital-intensive economic activities."

"Health care settings are inherently hazardous places, with very unpredictable and complex working environments. These hazards and risks not only result in a range of injuries and ill-health among workers but also jeopardise the safety of patients. The COVID-19 crisis has amplified the importance of ensuring that the health care that is provided is safe—for patients and health workers alike. A sufficient, and capable, workforce, is the foundation of resilient systems. Policy makers need to focus now on how to build and support an appropriate workforce to respond to future shocks. This includes health workers beyond the hospital—including those in community, long-term, and primary care. The safety of both patients and health workers should be protected through appropriate mechanisms to ensure the safety of protective equipment and sufficient supplies, appropriate staffing levels, training and support at the workplace. These governance mechanisms are even more relevant when policy makers face trade-offs between health, safety and economic concerns."