The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated the long-standing skills shortages in the health workforce across countries. Equipping health workers with the right skills is essential to respond to future health crises, to prepare for increasing use of digital technologies, and to plan for demographic change.

Policies aimed at reducing the environmental impact of human activities have important consequences for labour markets, jobs, and skills. As employment is shifting towards more sustainable activities, workers are increasingly expected to have skills that support the transition to a greener economy.

Skills are vital for building resilient economies and societies. By helping individuals develop a diverse range of skills and empowering them to apply these skills effectively, skills policies play a crucial role in responding to emerging threats, such as environmental degradation and harmful applications of technologies used to collect, generate, and exchange information. This edition of the Skills Outlook highlights the importance of supporting individuals in acquiring a wide range of skills, at varying levels of proficiency, to promote economic and social resilience. Additionally, the report acknowledges the role of attitudes and dispositions in enabling skills development and effective skills use. It also emphasises the need for policy makers to monitor the costs associated with policies aimed at promoting the green and digital transition, and how the transition affects inequalities. Training opportunities that respond to emerging labour market needs and efforts to facilitate their uptake can promote a just and inclusive green and digital transition. In turn, education systems that equip young people not only with skills but attitudes to manage change can ensure that the green and digital transition is sustainable in the longer term.

The transition to net-zero emissions by 2050 will have profound impacts on the labour market and the jobs of millions of workers. Aggregate effects on employment are estimated to be limited. But many jobs will be lost in the shrinking high-emission industries, while many others will be created in the expanding low-emission activities. This edition of the OECD Employment Outlook examines the characteristics of the jobs that are likely to thrive because of the transition (“green-driven jobs”), including their attractiveness in terms of job quality, and compares them to jobs in high-emission industries that tend to shrink. The cost of job displacement in these latter industries is assessed along with the trajectories of workers out of them towards new opportunities, and the labour market policies that can facilitate job reallocation. Particular attention is devoted to upskilling and reskilling strategies to facilitate workers’ transition into fast-growing, green-driven occupations. The distributive impacts of climate-change mitigation policies are also examined, with a focus on carbon pricing and options to redistribute its tax revenue to those most impacted. As usual, the first chapter of the Outlook assesses recent labour market developments (including wage trends), but also provides an update of the OECD Job Quality indicators.

This insightful Research Handbook delivers a comprehensive analysis of the significant contemporary trends and issues affecting human resource management (HRM) for health care, and their subsequent impact on individuals, organisations and national health services. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

This document presents the OECD’s renewed health system performance assessment framework. It incorporates new performance dimensions, notably people-centredness, resilience, and environmental sustainability, and places increased emphasis on addressing inequalities, including those related to gender.

This report, jointly developed by the European Observatory, OECD, and WHO Europe, serves as a proof of concept for a Health Systems Performance Assessment (HSPA) dashboard. HSPA is pivotal for health system transformation, providing policymakers with key indicators to identify and address system performance issues. This brief represents a step towards more policy-friendly dashboards, emphasizing the need for a focused set of HSPA indicators aligned with policy goals. The brief highlights the alignment and complementarity of the WHO-Observatory global HSPA framework and OECD's renewed framework, which aid policymakers in navigating health systems with actionable, policy-relevant indicators. These frameworks establish connections between performance indicators, health system functions, and overarching goals, supporting a coherent policy dashboard. Tracer indicators, like workforce, digital health, and service delivery outcomes, are emphasized as crucial for assessing key policy areas. The report underscores the importance of investing in data collection and infrastructure at national and international levels to make HSPA effective. It advocates for continuous improvement and collaboration among major international organizations, including WHO, OECD, EU, and the Observatory, to align methodologies and support informed policy decision-making.