Documents Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris 1 385 results

"The global economy has proved more resilient than expected this year, supported by improved financial conditions, rising AI-related investment and trade, and macroeconomic policies. However, underlying fragilities are increasing. Labour markets are showing first signs of weakening despite the OECD unemployment rate steady at 4.9%, with job vacancies falling below their 2019 average in many countries and confidence softening. Risks around the outlook remain significant, including the prospect of further trade barriers, a potential sharp repricing of risk in financial markets, potentially amplified by stresses in leveraged non-bank financial institutions and volatile crypto-asset markets. Lingering fiscal concerns could lead to further increases in long-term bond yields, which may tighten financial conditions and elevate debt-service burdens, potentially weighing on economic growth."

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"Climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution – the elements of the triple planetary crisis – are inextricably connected. Yet, policies to address them have generally not taken account of their interlinkages.

This OECD Environmental Outlook examines in detail the interlocking trends and drivers of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, projects how they will evolve through mid-century, and examines policy synergies and trade-offs. It also provides a roadmap to help governments tackle these challenges in a more integrated manner. "

"This paper updates previous OECD work on the strictness of activation requirements for benefit recipients, a topic central to the mutual obligations framework that underpins modern social safety nets. It covers multiple tiers of income support for jobseekers, including unemployment insurance, unemployment assistance, and minimum income benefits where relevant. By incorporating new data for 2024, it presents detailed information on job-search reporting procedures, monitoring mechanisms, definitions of suitable work, and sanction rules across OECD and EU countries. The paper also updates the OECD indicator of strictness of activation requirements. This composite indicator summarises complex national rules into a single, standardised measure that enables consistent monitoring and benchmarking across countries. Together with related OECD databases on benefit levels, work incentives for benefit recipients, and spending on active labour market policies, the updated database and strictness indicator support in-depth, evidence-based assessments of recent changes in income support and activation policies."

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"This policy brief provides new insights into how people experience the role of digital technologies in their lives, based on original cross-country data from the poll in the OECD Digital Well-being Hub, developed in collaboration with Cisco. The findings reveal wide variations in digital engagement and well-being outcomes across different groups of society. Younger adults report the highest engagement with generative AI, remote work, and recreational screen time. Women are relatively more engaged in social networking than men; and while most overall perceive digital tools as strengthening their relationships, this view is more common among youth and women. High screen time remains a concern, with 38% of users, especially young adults, exceeding five hours daily. AI-related training is primarily taken up by younger, highly educated individuals, reflecting increasing awareness of AI's impact on career prospects. Within the OECD Well-being Framework, these findings offer a timely lens on the complex interplay between digitalisation, demographic patterns, and people's well-being."

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"Population ageing is transforming economies and societies across many OECD countries, including those in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe. At the same time, persistent inequalities in paid and unpaid work continue to limit women's full participation in the labour market, undermining growth, productivity, and countries' capacity to respond to demographic change. This policy paper examines how low fertility, longer life expectancy, and rising care needs intersect with gaps in employment, earnings, and caregiving. Drawing on international evidence and country experiences, the paper highlights how gender-blind demographic strategies can inadvertently reinforce inequalities, reduce policy effectiveness, and miss opportunities to strengthen care systems, labour supply, and healthy ageing. It identifies how governments can design more effective demographic responses by integrating equality considerations into labour market, care, health, and social protection reforms. It also outlines the institutional capacities needed to support whole-of-government action, from budgeting to data systems and impact assessments."

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"AI can be used to improve access to social security benefits and ensure the right benefits get to the right people at the right time. To explore how AI can be used to this end, this report documents concrete policy levers, tools, implementation strategies, and capacity-building efforts in national public services, with particular attention to issues of data quality, governance, and workforce readiness. It provides guidance on how the social security sector can benefit from and align with national efforts for more cohesive, impactful and trustworthy uses of AI. Further efforts will be needed to explore the effective use of AI in the social security sector, particularly in adapting these practices to the specific operational, legal, and ethical contexts of social protection systems. Continued experimentation, evaluation, and cross-sector collaboration will be essential to ensure that AI adoption delivers tangible benefits while safeguarding equity, transparency, and public trust.

The report underscores a critical opportunity to harness AI as a strategic enabler of more inclusive, effective, and transparent social security systems. Realising this potential will depend on embedding robust governance frameworks, investing in data and infrastructure, and building the institutional and human capabilities necessary for trustworthy AI in the public sector."

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"The nature, content and milieu of work – i.e. the quality of the working environment – matter in many ways for people, firms and society as a whole. There is a great deal of evidence to show clear associations between job quality and the health of workers, their ability to successfully combine work and life while fully mobilising their skills and abilities to build a career, and their productivity. Investments in quality working environments can be welfare enhancing and economically efficient. Policies and practices reflect these findings insufficiently, an apparent paradox that finds its roots in various market failures. There is scope for public intervention to raise awareness, to ensure better coordination of key stakeholders (employers, workers' representatives and various public entities) and to put in place the right financial incentives for firms to invest in better working conditions. Action in this field is also important in view of ongoing considerable changes in the labour market. The future of work is very uncertain at this stage; the digitalisation and uberisation of work have the potential for improvements in working conditions but also bear the risk of de-skilling, lower pay, lower job security and poor working conditions for parts of the labour force."

"The OECD Employment Outlook looks at the latest labour market developments and prospects in OECD member countries. This edition also discusses the enormous challenges population ageing poses to living standards and social cohesion more generally. The consequences of an ageing workforce for productivity growth are also analysed.

Without swift changes in policies and behaviours, GDP per capita growth will slow down significantly in most OECD countries. Integrating under-represented groups in the labour market will help offset ageing, in particular older workers and, in many countries, women who are currently not working or working few hours. "

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"This Working Paper looks at some of the shorter and longer-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on labour markets across OECD countries. It examines how job retention schemes, unemployment benefits, sickness and disability-related benefits and their prompt expansion have succeeded in protecting people's jobs and incomes; and how successful countries were in preventing structural increases in labour market inactivity, as indicated by the development of disability benefit receipt. The paper demonstrates and confirms the overall significant success in the labour market response to the COVID-19 pandemic across OECD countries. This contributes to explaining why the COVID-19 pandemic has disappeared from the labour market discussion much faster than initially expected, despite an unprecedented shock to labour markets and a sharp decline in working hours at the outset of the crisis. Preventing sustained long-term unemployment and long-term sickness absence has secured jobs and incomes and prevented inactivity ."

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