A rapid decrease in unemployment is a short-term priority to limit social problems and reduce the risk of rising structural unemployment. To this end, strengthening labour market policies to sustain labour demand is key. The public works programme should remain temporary and become more focused...

Population ageing will lead to a smaller and older workforce. Looking forward, this means that growth will increasingly depend on ensuring the best use of Slovenian workers. This implies keeping older and experience workers longer in employment and better support difficult-to-employ low-skilled...

A highly skilled workforce is crucial to sustain competitiveness and contain the rise in income inequality. Recent surveys of adult skills and educational performance suggest that younger cohorts are doing less well than their predecessors. Many immigrants struggle both in school and in the...

This paper identifies the labour market impact of the Great Recession on immigrants compared to natives and how this relationship has evolved since the downturn. We find that the employment penalty suffered by immigrant workers, relative to native workers, increased significantly over the Irish...

The strength of the German labour market response to the financial crisis of 2008-09 demonstrated the benefits of past labour market reforms, which raised work incentives, improved job matching and increased working hour flexibility. Going forward, the government should build on this success and...

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...

Owing to past structural reforms, Costa Rica has enjoyed robust GDP growth and productivity levels are gradually converging towards the OECD average. However, large GDP per capita and productivity gaps persist. In addition, not everyone has benefited from this growth. Inequality has increased...