Poor labour-market outcomes remain one of Poland’s major structural weaknesses, impeding firms’ competitiveness and the nation’s potential output. Boosting employment prospects is also critical, as the country will soon be ageing at a fast pace. Despite long working hours, labour...

Many OECD governments have enacted, or are contemplating, future increases in statutory pension ages, sometimes provoking vociferous political opposition. Empirical cross-country estimation work consistently finds that coefficients on statutory pension ages are positive and highly statistically...

A decomposition of changes to participation rates of 55-to-74 year-olds between 2002 and 2017 based on an estimated equation attributes more than two thirds of the median increase (of 10.9 percentage points) to rising life expectancy and educational attainment. About 1 percentage point is...

This paper documents joblessness in OECD countries, provides a detailed diagnosis of structural employment barriers in Belgium, Korea and Norway by applying the OECD Faces of Joblessness methodology to the situation just before the COVID-19 crisis and discusses the policy implications. It shows...

Regional inequality in Slovakia is among the highest in the OECD and is increasing. The main reason for regional disparity is the combination of low economic growth and job creation in the eastern and central part of the country and insufficient labour mobility to the west, in particular by...

The Czech labour market has undergone significant changes as a consequence of economic restructuring. This paper analyses these changes, highlighting both the impact of the recent economic crisis and some of the longer-run determinants of the Czech labour market. The higher share of tertiary...

Employment has risen by more and unemployment has risen less than expected, given the path of output. Nevertheless, long-term and youth unemployment and involuntary part-time work are high. A polarised labour market risks worsening income inequality, which is high by OECD standards, despite a...

This paper analyses the age structure of employment rates across OECD countries with a focus on France. The statistical contribution of each age group to total unemployment-rate differentials is also computed. An estimate of the sensitivity of age-specific unemployment rates to the economic...

In this paper we examine whether past labour market reforms aiming at reducing the rate of unemployment have raised its long-run volatility. Using non-linear panel data models applied to 24 OECD countries between 1985 and 2007, as well as Monte-Carlo techniques, we do not find any evidence of...