Household choices – such as what to eat, how to get to work and how to heat our homes – have significant implications for the environment. With the urgency of environmental action and the need to shift to more sustainable consumption patterns, making more sustainable choices holds great potential to reduce environmental impacts.

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.

Education at a Glance is the authoritative source for information on the state of education around the world. It provides data on the structure, finances and performance of education systems across OECD, accession and partner countries. More than 100 charts and tables in this publication – as well as links to much more available on the educational database – provide key information on the output of educational institutions; the impact of learning across countries; access, participation and progression in education; the financial resources invested in education; and teachers, the learning environment and the organisation of schools. The 2024 edition focuses on equity, investigating how progress through education and the associated learning and labour market outcomes are impacted by dimensions such as gender, socio-economic status, country of birth and regional location. A specific chapter is dedicated to the Sustainable Development Goal 4 on education, providing an assessment of where OECD, accession and partner countries stand in providing equal access to quality education at all levels.

This report outlines good practice principles intended to encourage the incorporation of behavioural perspectives as part of standard policymaking practice in government and governmental organisations.

Policies that foster the transition towards a more circular economy are gaining significant traction. Such policies are essential for a sustainable, low-carbon, resource-efficient and competitive economy. These developments bring about demands for reliable information to track progress and gauge results as well as for indicators that speak to policymakers and the public at large. This report presents a conceptual framework and indicator set to monitor progress and inform circular economy policies. It is designed to support OECD work on circular economy and provides a source of inspiration for countries seeking to build a coherent circular economy monitoring framework.

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.