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Australia has committed to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and more recently outlined a more ambitious intermediate target for emission reductions by 2030. However, achieving these targets will be challenging given a historical reliance on coal generation and the presence of significant mining and agriculture sectors. It will require a rapid transformation of the electricity grid, significant emissions reductions in highly-polluting sectors such as industry and agriculture, and sufficient offsets generated by “negative emissions” technologies and practices to counterbalance any emissions that cannot be fully eliminated. At the same time, Australia is particularly vulnerable to the physical impacts of climate change, as the driest inhabited continent on the planet with the majority of the population living on the coasts. Further significant reforms are required to meet the emission reduction goals, support the reallocation of workers and adapt to climate change.

Japan faces serious demographic headwinds. Under current fertility, employment and immigration rates, the population would fall by 45% by 2100 and employment by 52%. Given the challenges of a shrinking and ageing population, the government has pledged to “create a children-first economic society and reverse the birth rate decline”. One priority is to strengthen the weak financial position of youth, which leads many to delay or forgo marriage and children. Making it easier to combine paid work and family is also critical so that women are not forced to choose between a career and children. Policies should also cut the cost of raising children, the key obstacle to couples achieving their desired number of children. Given the challenge of reversing fertility trends, Japan needs to prepare for a low-fertility future by raising productivity and employment, particularly among women and older people. Breaking down labour market dualism, which disproportionately affects youth, women and older people, is a priority. Abolishing the right of firms to set a mandatory retirement age (usually at 60) and raising the pension eligibility age would also promote employment. Foreign workers are helping ease labour shortages, but more needs to be done to attract foreign talent. A comprehensive approach is needed to raise fertility, the employment rates of women and older persons and inflows of foreign workers.

This paper develops a novel classification of high-polluting occupations for a large sample of European countries. Unlike previous efforts in the literature, the classification exploits country-level data on air polluting emission intensity by industry. The country-level data allows to capture important cross-country differences, due to differences in technology and in production focus. Applying the new classification to European Labour Force Survey data shows that, on average across the countries covered, about 4% of workers are employed in high-polluting jobs, ranging from 9% in Czechia and the Slovak Republic to around 2% in Austria. These shares do not exhibit any clear decreasing trend over the past decade. High-polluting jobs are unequally distributed, being over-represented among men, workers with lower and medium educational attainment and those living in rural areas.

The pandemic has stimulated growing interest in using advanced practice nurses such as Nurse Practitioners (NPs) to address growing primary care needs linked to population ageing and more people living with chronic conditions, although not all countries are moving at the same speed. This OECD Health Working paper reviews recent developments in advance practice nursing (APN) in primary care in OECD countries. It focusses on NPs in those countries that are recognising this category of nurses, but also describes the emergence of other categories of nurses taking on new roles such as family and community nurses in some European countries. In those countries that have achieved decisive breakthroughs in new forms of task sharing between primary care doctors (GPs) and nurses, increasing the number of APNs in primary care is seen as a real opportunity to respond to primary care needs and reduce pressures on GPs and hospitals.

Most workers who will be exposed to artificial intelligence (AI) will not require specialised AI skills (e.g. machine learning, natural language processing, etc.). Even so, AI will change the tasks these workers do, and the skills they require. This report provides first estimates for the effect of artificial intelligence on the demand for skills in jobs that do not require specialised AI skills. The results show that the skills most demanded in occupations highly exposed to AI are management and business skills. These include skills in general project management, finance, administration and clerical tasks. The results also show that there have been increases over time in the demand for these skills in occupations highly exposed to AI. For example, the share of vacancies in these occupations that demand at least one emotional, cognitive or digital skill has increased by 8 percentage points. However, using a panel of establishments (which induces plausibly exogenous variation in AI exposure), the report finds evidence that the demand for these skills is beginning to fall.

Rising uncertainties and geo-political tensions, together with increasingly complex trade relations have increased the demand for monitoring global trade in a timely manner. Although it was primarily designed to ensure vessel safety, information from the Automatic Information System, which allows for the tracking of vessels across the globe, is particularly well suited for providing insights on port activity and maritime trade developments, which accounts for a large share of global trade. Data are available in quasi real time but need to be pre-processed and validated. This paper contributes to existing research in this field in two major ways. First, it proposes a new methodology to identify ports, at a higher level of granularity than in past research. Second, it builds indicators to monitor port congestion and trends in maritime trade flows and provides more granular information to better understand those flows. Those indicators will still need to be refined, by complementing the AIS database with additional data sources, but already provide a useful source of information to monitor trade, at the country and global levels.

This paper presents a profile of the agency responsible for education evaluation and assessment in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: the Education and Training Evaluation Commission (ETEC). It draws on research conducted by the OECD as part of a three-year project to develop the technical capacity of ETEC and benchmark its policies and practices with those of similar agencies in OECD countries. The paper describes ETEC’s mission and structure; its remit, activities and instruments; and the resources it has to fulfil its mandate. In doing so, the paper traces the Commission’s trajectory from its establishment to the present day. It aims to be of interest to education policymakers and researchers in OECD and partner countries, providing information on both the Saudi education system and evaluation and assessment agencies internationally – topics that have received relatively little attention in education literature.

High employment growth has sustained Israel’s high GDP growth in recent decades, but demographic change and labour market duality put future growth at risk. Policy action is required to stimulate employment and raise labour productivity, especially among population groups with weaker labour market outcomes. A particular concern is closing employment gaps of Haredim and Arab Israelis and ensuring gender equality in the workplace, which would simultaneously improve opportunities for all Israelis and the aggregate labour productivity of the economy. This will require setting appropriate work incentives and providing better support for working parents; improving skills at all stages of the learning cycle; as well as increasing mobility and improving reallocation towards high-productivity jobs and firms, in particular in the high-tech sector.

This adverse outcome pathway links androgen receptor agonism in teleost fish during gonadogenesis to male-biased sexual differentiation and consequently, reduced population growth rate. Sex determination in teleost fishes is highly plastic; it can be genetically or environmentally influenced. Species with environmentally-based sex determination in particular can be very sensitive to exogenous chemicals during the period of differentiation. Exogenous hormones are of ecological concern because they have the potential to alter gonad development and sex differentiation. This AOP is referred to as AOP 376 in the Collaborative Adverse Outcome Pathway Wiki (AOP-Wiki).

Croatia’s labour market has made important progress over the past decade. Employment rates are rising, reducing the gap with OECD countries, and poverty has fallen. While important weaknesses remain, many dimensions of equity and working conditions are similar to OECD countries. Continuing this progress is essential for Croatia’s incomes and well-being to converge with OECD countries, to counter accelerating population ageing and to make the most of emerging opportunities, including from digitalisation and the green economy transition. For employers, filling increasingly advanced skill needs is a growing obstacle. Relatively few of the young and older adults are in work – contributing to weakening skills, lower incomes and higher poverty risks. Addressing these challenges will require dramatically expanding participation in re-skilling and adult education programmes, and raising the workforce’s flexibility, for example by strengthening active labour market policies, improving the housing market’s dynamism and making the most of immigrants’ and returned emigrants’ skills. This Working Paper relates to the 2023 OECD Economic Survey of Croatia.

This adverse outcome pathway links inhibition of aromatase activity in teleost fish during gonadogenesis to increased differentiation to testis resulting in a male-biased sex ratio in the population, and ultimately, reduced population sustainability. Most gonochoristic fish species develop either as males or females and do not change sex throughout their life span. However, in species where sexual differentiation is controlled at least to some degree by environmental factors, there can be a window of development during gonadal differentiation that is sensitive to a variety of exogenous conditions. During this window, endocrine active chemicals, aromatase inhibitors in particular, have the potential to alter gonad development and sex differentiation. This AOP is referred to as AOP 346 in the Collaborative Adverse Outcome Pathway Wiki (AOP-Wiki).

The Province of Córdoba in Argentina has adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a holistic framework to promote social inclusion and well-being, and to address its territorial development challenges in an integrated way. Building on the recommendations from the OECD report on “A Territorial Approach to the SDGs in Córdoba, Argentina” (2021), Córdoba’s policies have focused on the following four strategic axes: (i) gender and employment, (ii) education for employment, (iii) housing and access to essential services, and (iv) bridging the digital divide. This paper provides the Province of Córdoba with a set of recommendations to move these axes forward through a comprehensive approach using the SDG lens, including to bridge the digital divide in the labour market, ensure equitable access to services such as quality education, and create an inclusive and supportive environment that empowers women to fully participate in the workforce.

This journal article presents a set of high-level good budgeting practices in the health sector. The purpose of these good practices is to support countries in assessing their own budgeting arrangements for health, and in designing budgeting reforms. The article builds on 10 years of work by the OECD Joint Network of Senior Budget and Health Officials.

Financial markets need clear information and credible metrics to inform climate-related investment and financing decisions. This report explores key challenges and opportunities related to the transparency, specificity and integrity of metrics to support the monitoring of financial institutions’ net-zero commitments. It provides an assessment of metrics put forward in five voluntary frameworks, identifies the type of information and metrics proposed, their common themes and gaps, as well as limitations in underlying methodological guidance that may hinder financial institutions’ ability to report and disclose metrics. The report highlights a need both for continued efforts to develop robust metrics and incentivise improved data disclosure, as well as for international co-operation to reduce fragmentation and provide further transparency on the scope of metrics and underlying methodologies.

This policy perspective was developed at the request of the Directorate for Education Reform, Scotland (United Kingdom) to provide an overview of how countries across the OECD assess social and emotional skills in upper secondary education. It is accompanied by, and draws on material from, a Peer Learning Discussion on the same topic in March 2023 in Scotland. It aims to provide an overview of literature and country approaches in an area where there is presently limited comparative information on national and system-wide approaches. The policy perspective addresses two key questions about country practices in assessing social and emotional skills (variously known among OECD countries as social and emotional skills, non-cognitive capacities, 21st-century skills, transversal competencies, and complex competencies): a) how do countries collect information on social and emotional on a systemic level; i.e. outside formal upper secondary certification, and b) how do countries assess social and emotional skills for the purposes of upper secondary certification? To answer these questions, the policy perspective provides an inventory and synthesis from 12 countries of approaches, models, and strategies used at the national level to document, assess, and recognise similarly challenging skills, and detailed cases of the model and strategy for assessment of social and emotional skills in Canada (British Columbia), Finland, and New Zealand.

The Autonomous Province of Bolzano-Bozen, Italy, has embraced the 2030 Agenda through a sustainability pact including its sustainable development strategy "Everyday for Future". The strategy defines seven fields of action that were derived from the SDGs framework to promote sustainability across policy areas such as the conservation of the natural environment, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, competitiveness and social justice. The SDGs offer a clear framework to tackle the province’s main territorial development challenges, such as climate change, the transition to sustainable agriculture, mobility, tourism, and affordable housing. This report provides guidance on how to harness the implementation of the SDGs to address these challenges through concrete measures across the seven fields of action, identify and manage synergies and trade-offs between sectoral policies and, in turn, help the province implement Everyday for Future.

The EU’s ambitious Green Deal aims at achieving net zero emissions by 2050. The EU is starting from a relatively good position. It has successfully reduced greenhouse gas emissions over the past decade. But further efforts are needed to reach the net zero target. These include an extension of emission trading to agriculture and the phase-out of generous subsidies for fossil fuels. Such efforts should be complemented by additional measures to shift to clean energy, notably more integrated electricity markets and deeper capital markets that provide the necessary investment in new technologies. Accelerating the green transition will also involve costs for displaced workers. Bolstering workers’ mobility and training will help improve labour reallocation and reduce transition costs.

This paper outlines key issues and provides insights to government leaders looking to design and implement initiatives that require joint working across public agencies. The first part of this paper defines key concepts and explores the benefits and related costs of cross-agency initiatives. The second discusses various contextual elements that need to be considered when making decisions about how to design cross-agency initiatives, including the nature of the objectives, the systems of government, and relationships among potential partners. The third section looks at different models across four fundamental elements: governance; people (team support), funding, and performance monitoring. The final section looks at some of the main systemic elements that can support cross-agency initiatives success.