Germany’s shortage of skilled workers has sharply increased, especially in the social and education sectors, health and care, construction and skilled crafts, information technology and jobs in science, technology, engineer­ing and mathematics (STEM). Simultaneously, the demand for low...

We set up a search and matching model with a private and a public sector to understand the effects of employment and wage policies in the public sector on unemployment and education decisions. The effects on the educational composition of the labor force depend crucially on the structure of the...

This paper estimates the causal effect of recruitment competition on the labor demand for high-skilled foreign workers. I assemble a new data set, combining a firm-level panel of all Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) submitted as a first step to obtaining H-1B visas between 2010 and 2019 with...

Governments across the globe are implementing stricter environmental policies to combat climate change and promote sustainability. This study contributes to the growing literature exploring the influence of environmental policy on skill-biased employment across various occupations. Specifically,...

Governments across the globe are implementing stricter environmental policies to combat climate change and promote sustainability. This study contributes to the growing literature exploring the influence of environmental policy on skill-biased employment across various occupations. Specifically,...

Der Bericht beleuchtet die Bedeutung der Anerkennung ausländischer Berufsqualifikationen für die Fachkräftesicherung aus Sicht von Unternehmen in Deutschland. Die Anerkennung fördert die nachhaltige und qualifikationsgerechte Integration von Fachkräften in den Arbeitsmarkt, verbessert deren...

We analyze the importance of the educated class for the persistence of mass consumption societies in an economy with a hierarchy of needs.Through the demand for managerial talent (which is needed to operate advanced industrial technologies), the latter generate their own demand for skills. In...

This policy brief draws on the findings of Tverdostup et al. (2025) to examine Austrian firms' responses to labour shortages through automation and migration. Like many European nations, Austria has been grappling with labour shortages over the past decade. These shortages have been influenced...

Digitalisation in the public sector presents both opportunities and challenges, impacting working conditions, work organisation and social dialogue, yet research on its effects remains limited, especially in Germany. In particular, the role of digitalisation in shaping work dynamics, workload...

We evaluate the influence on the skill premium of the task content of jobs by exploiting the text data from online job ads covering 2009-2018 (over 189,000 ads) published by one of the leading Chilean online job portals (www.trabajando.com). Our analysis tests the expected complementarity...

This report provides a mapping of existing research that employs online labour market data, covering both online job vacancies (demand side) and online applicant data (CVs) (supply side). We discuss and assess a variety of tools and empirical methods that have been used to address specific...

This paper examines the relationship between mobile internet, employment and structural transformation in Rwanda. Thanks to its ability to enable access to a wide range of ICT technologies, internet coverage has the potential to affect the dynamics and the composition of employment...

We assess whether online data on vacancies and applications to a job board are a suitable source for studying skills dynamics outside of Europe and the United States, where a rich literature has examined skills dynamics using online vacancy data. Yet, the knowledge on skills dynamics is scarce...

In the Philippines, skills mismatch has persisted since the 1970s, when the higher education system produced more college graduates than the economy could absorb. Prolonged skills mismatch can result in adverse outcomes such as lower wages, decreased job satisfaction, diminished productivity,...

Following the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, the emphasis on digitization and robotization has grown at an unprecedented rate in the global economy, resulting in significant changes to the labour market composition and increasing the value of digital skills. The aim of this article is to emphasize...

This report provides updated evidence on the persistence of labour shortages amid declining levels of labour market slack in the EU and at Member State level. This serves as a background to the main focus of the report, which is on organisational policies aimed at attracting workers to...

This report provides updated evidence on the persistence of labour shortages amid declining levels of labour market slack in the EU and at Member State level. This serves as a background to the main focus of the report, which is on organisational policies aimed at attracting workers to...

The objective of the document is to explore the current and evolving role of European public employment services (PES) in the international recruitment of skilled labour and develop recommendations to expand and/or streamline their role. The document maps current involvement of PES structured...

Firms in developed countries face increasing shortages of young workers. This paper studies the importance of young workers, particularly vocational trainees, for firm technology investments. Leveraging exogenous variation in trainee supply caused by an education reform in Germany in 2001, I...

This work aims to determine whether the difference between skill and education-based measures of labour mismatch affects the estimates of the labour mismatch-earnings relationship as specified by Verdugo and Verdugo's (1989) version of over, required and undereducation (ORU) Mincer earnings...

The Initiative for coal regions in transition has developed this toolkit as part of its knowledge products to assist practitioners in coal regions (including peat and oil shale regions) across Europe. The aim of this toolkit is to help stakeholders to address the upskilling and reskilling needs...

In the 2021-2027 programming period, the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+), European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and Just Transition Fund (JTF) play a significant role in support to skills. Additional funds, such as the Recovery and Resilience Fund (RRF), Erasmus+, Technical Support...

Transversal skills like critical thinking, teamwork, and learning skills are essential for work, education and daily life. Developing and recognising these skills play an important role in promoting sustainable economic growth, social inclusion, and competitiveness. The EU supports employers,...

We document a steady decline in low-skilled immigration that began with the onset of the Great Recession in 2007, which was associated with labor shortages in low-skilled service occupations and a decline in the skill premium. Falling returns to high-skilled jobs coincided with a decline in the...

Purpose: To identify the skills that, in the processes of digitalization and Industry 4.0, contribute to improving the professional behaviours of the employees involved in these processes.Design/methodology/approach: For this purpose, a Delphi study was carried out, collecting the opinions of 38...

Der Fachkräftemangel stellt auch pharmazeutische Unternehmen in Deutschland vor große Herausforderungen und wird dies vor dem Hintergrund des demografischen Wandels perspektivisch immer stärker tun. Mit Blick auf die Positionierung Deutschlands im internationalen Wettbewerb innovativer...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is considered to be the next general-purpose technology, with the potential of performing tasks commonly requiring human capabilities. While it is commonly feared that AI replaces labor and disrupts jobs, we instead investigate the potential of AI for overcoming...

We study how random variation in the availability of highly educated, foreign-born workers impacts firm performance and recruitment behavior. We combine two rich data sources: 1) administrative employer-employee matched data from the US Census Bureau; and 2) firmlevel information on the first...

We document a slowdown in low-skilled immigration that began around the onset of the Great Recession in 2007, which was associated with a subsequent rise in low-skilled wages, a decline in the skill premium, and labor shortages in service occupations. Falling returns to education also coincided...

Technology is disrupting labor markets. We analyze the demand and reward for skills at occupation and state level across two time periods using job postings. First, we use principal components analysis to derive nine skills groups: "collaborative leader", "interpersonal & organized", "big data",...

Are labor markets in higher-income countries more meritocratic, in the sense that worker-job matching is based on skills rather than idiosyncratic attributes unrelated to productivity? If so, why? And what are the aggregate consequences? Using internationally comparable data on worker skills and...