OECD Skills Outlook 2023
Skills for a Resilient Green and Digital Transition
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.
Also available in: French
Foreword
Climate change and policy to combat it, as well as digital transformation, are the defining challenges of our time. The urgency to address climate change has never been more apparent. The consequences of rising temperatures are profound and unforgiving. Extreme weather events, raging wildfires, biodiversity loss, natural disasters and the resulting food and water insecurity are becoming increasingly commonplace. These changes are not isolated. They trigger a domino effect of economic disruption, adverse health effects, heightened conflict and forced migration. At the same time, progress in artificial intelligence (AI) and, in particular, the onset of generative AI is such that, in some areas, its output has become indistinguishable from that of humans, and in several domains, AI’s capabilities are well beyond what humans can do. The AI revolution is redefining our workplaces, societies and knowledge exchange mechanisms. While AI systems bear the promise of supporting scientific discoveries that could enhance the health, productivity and well-being of many, they could also challenge many jobs and even be used to spread false and misleading information, eroding public trust, threatening security and social cohesion.
Also available in: French
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