This report on Australia is the third country study published in a series of reports looking into strategies to encourage greater labour market participation of all groups in society with a special focus on the most disadvantaged.

Australia's long span of positive output growth continues, demonstrating the economy's resilience. In the absence of negative shocks, policy rates should start to rise soon, as wage growth and price-inflation pick up. Fiscal discipline will nevertheless still be required to bring balances to ...

Skills are the key to shaping a better future and central to the capacity of countries and people to thrive in an increasingly interconnected and rapidly changing world. Megatrends such as globalisation, technological advances and demographic change are reshaping work and society, generating a growing demand for higher levels of skills and new sets of skills.

The costs of persistent misalignment between the supply and demand for skills are substantial, ranging from lost wages for workers to lower productivity for firms and countries. Addressing skills imbalances has become a pressing priority as OECD governments reflect on the implications of ...

Greece’s economy had been expanding by nearly 2% for over three years before the COVID-19 shock. Structural reforms, high primary budget surpluses and debt measures underpinned Greece’s recovery and rising confidence. Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, abruptly interrupting the recovery and adding new challenges to raising inclusiveness, competitiveness and growth.

This book is a contemporary socio-legal study of Australia’s protection of economic and social rights. Despite Australia’s hortatory language of compliance with international rights standards, its translation of these standards into domestic law and policy has been found wanting. In considering Australia’s compliance across the policy areas of health, housing, labour and social security, it is argued that Australia’s failings can be understood in terms of its institutional framework. This framework provides incomplete legal protection for rights and leaves that protection almost exclusively in the realm of politics and policymaking, an arena still dominated by neoliberalism and a political culture averse to the protection and promotion of economic and social rights.

The rising cost of illness and disability benefits are one of today’s biggest social and labour market challenges. The promise of activation-oriented work disability policies was labour market engagement for all people, regardless of illness, injury or impairment. However, the reality has been more complex. The Science and Politics of Work Disability Policy addresses social and political economic contexts driving state work disability reform in 13 countries. In this first attempt to explain the history and future of work disability policy, this book asks new questions about work disability policy design, focus, and effects. It details how work disability policies have evolved with jurisdictions, why these take their current shape, and where they are heading. The well positioned authors draw on their insider knowledge and expertise in law, medicine, and social science to provide detailed case studies of their jurisdictions. This pathbreaking volume will be of interest to social security system policy makers, scholars, and students in the health and social sciences.

The 2021 edition of the OECD Employment Outlook focusses on the labour market implications of the COVID‐19 crisis. Chapters 1-3 concentrate on the main labour market and social challenges brought about by the crisis and the policies to address them.

Gender Equality and Policy Implementation in the Corporate World takes a unique approach to the issue of gender equality in corporations in the 21st century. It examines the implementation of specific policies that seek to promote women's presence on corporate boards in 15 democracies in Western and Central Eastern Europe, North America, and Australasia through the lens of the Gender Equality Policy in Practice Approach. The thirteen empirically rich country chapters by leading country experts and two separate comparative chapter answer core questions. How were policies adopted and implemented? Did they achieve any degree of success that would allow for real and lasting equality? What were the politics of the pursuit of corporate gender equality across the 15 countries? What worked and did not work and why? What are the lessons to be drawn from these experiences? The findings of the book show that policy implementation does matter, but that in this last bastion of male domination, policies have had more success in increasing women's numbers over challenging gender-biased norms that block women of all cultural and socio-economic backgrounds from gaining real power on boards. The path-breaking study shows that the reasons for this slow change are highly complex and case specific, in the details of each policy mix. While progress has been slow in coming, it has still been made even in these challenging times. Future policy success, the book concludes, is in the hands of men and women willing to come forward to overcome these well entrenched obstacles.

This publication highlights new evidence on policies to support job creation, bringing together the latest research on labour market, entrepreneurship and local economic development policy to help governments support job creation in the recovery.