Documents Machlica, Gabriel 3 results

"Skill requirements in the labour market have significantly changed over the past two decades. The restructuring of the economy is making the labour market increasingly knowledge-based. The education system has reacted to this structural change, but as the pace has been relatively slow, many graduates remain without adequate skills and insufficiently prepared to apply knowledge in unfamiliar settings. Moreover, strong selectivity early in the education system reinforces student's socio?economic background, leading to an excess of low skilled workers with poor labour market prospects. This contributes to persistently low employment rates and low productivity gains, slowing down the income convergence process. The education system needs to improve learning outcomes by better aligning student qualifications with labour market needs. Improving overall educational outcomes would also make the education system more equitable and inclusive. Bolstering the supply of skills requires lifelong learning and improving the access to labour market to those who have left the education system without proper skills. In return, this will also increase “on?the?job” training, which is a key driver of acquiring competences after graduation. In addition, mobilising untapped skill resources, particular educated younger women, would raise employment, which is needed to confront the labour market problem arising from population ageing."

"Changing labour market demand and moving up the global value chain requires high-skilled workers. However, the share of adults with high skill levels in the Slovak Republic is one of the lowest in the OECD. Improving the education system would raise quality and better align students' skills with new labour market needs and help them face further changes in the work environment. The contribution of the tertiary education system to skills improvement is one of the lowest in the OECD. It has to open itself more to the outside world: by easing the conditions for foreign professors and researchers to teach at Slovak universities, promoting internationally respected research and intensifying the cooperation with the business sector. Another challenge is to secure an adequate supply of skilled workers in the face of rapid population ageing and increasing emigration of young high-skilled workers. Ageing of the population will not only lead to shrinking labour supply, but a growing part of the workforce will need to be retrained. Bolstering the supply of skills requires lifelong learning and attracting skilled migrants, including returning Slovaks."

"Since the start of the Great Recession, labour productivity growth has been weak in the United Kingdom, weaker than in many other OECD countries. The productivity shortfall, defined as the gap between actual productivity and the level implied by its pre-crisis trend growth rate, was nearly 20% for output per hour at the end of 2016. This study assesses the UK productivity puzzle and discusses its possible determinants at the sectoral level. Most of the UK productivity underperformance is structural rather than cyclical. Half of the productivity shortfall is explained by non-financial services (with information and communication being the largest contributor), a fourth by financial services, and another fourth by manufacturing, other production and construction. All but non-financial services and the construction sectors contribute disproportionately to the productivity shortfall compared to their shares in overall output and hours worked of the UK economy. In non-financial services, large increases in self-employed with no employees, reduced matching of skills to jobs and a lower capital-output ratio may have been a drag on productivity. Stagnant productivity in the financial sector is mainly linked to reduced risk-taking and leverage, as reflected by declining total factor productivity following its steep increases in the run-up to the crisis. Greater substitution of labour for capital and weak corporate restructuring have both held back productivity improvements in the manufacturing sector. Some causes of the productivity puzzle pre-date the crisis, including low tangible investment, too rapid expansion of financial services, weak innovation in the manufacturing sector, and a secular decline of oil and gas industries. This Working Paper relates to the 2018 OECD Economic Survey of the United-Kingdom (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-united-kingdom.htm)."