Education at a Glance – attainment and employment

One central message that emerges from the report is that a combination of higher education attainment in terms of both literacy proficiency and acquisition of high-level skills affects participation in the labour market. In this regard, university-educated younger adults were found to have higher employment rates than tertiary educated older adults. “The issue is that most university-educated younger people seem to have skills that are required by employers in comparison to older people with similar qualifications,” said Louise Fitz, a communications officer at the OECD secretariat.

Even in a climate of persistent gaps in employment and job quality, university-educated adults in OECD countries enjoy better working conditions than their less educated peers. “About 75% of people with a tertiary degree work full-time, while only 64% of their counterparts without an upper secondary education work full-time,” says the report.

Notably, those findings are consistent with conclusions reached by a joint study by the World Bank, International Labour Organization and the OECD, which called for skills upgrading and technological innovation in higher education in order to increase job creation. The report, G20 Labour Markets: Outlook, key challenges and policy responses, stressed that low-skill development strategy was incompatible with rapid job creation and sustainable development.

Rooting for partnerships between higher education institutions and employers, the study says this is the only way to create quality jobs, which are key for reducing poverty. The researchers argue that the availability of high quality education that stresses training of relevance is necessary to prevent young people from detaching from the labour market. “Persons with low education and limited in-demand skills are also more than twice as likely to be unemployed,” notes the report issued on 9 September in Melbourne, Australia.

According to Education at a Glance, in 12 countries – Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Poland, Russia, Slovakia and Slovenia – employment rates among tertiary-educated people are over 30 percentage points higher than among people with below upper secondary education. “Unemployment rates are also generally lower among individuals with vocational upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education,” notes the OECD report.

Over the past 15 years, employment rates across OECD countries have been consistently higher for people with tertiary education than for those without. In this regard, individuals who hold a tertiary degree can expect higher employment returns than individuals who invested only up to secondary education.

Education and social outcomes

However, the impact of higher education outcomes and skills goes beyond higher earnings and employment, as according to Education at a Glance there is a strong relationship between higher education attainment and positive social outcomes. Higher education and skills have the capacity to transform lives, generate prosperity and promote social inclusion. “In essence higher education and skills transform lives and drive economies not just in OECD countries but globally,” says Gurría.

Increasingly in OECD countries, tertiary education attainment and high levels of literacy are associated with positive health status, interpersonal trust and political efficacy. Even among individuals with the same level of educational attainment, those with higher levels of literacy proficiency have higher levels of social outcomes, while low-skilled individuals are likely to be at the bottom of the ladder.

The crux of the matter is that as the demand for higher education and skills continues to shift towards more sophisticated tasks and technology affecting most aspects of life, individuals with poor literacy and numeracy skills are more likely to find themselves at risk. In OECD member countries, people with low skills proficiency also tend to report poorer health and believe that they have little impact on political processes, as compared to their peers with university education and high-level skills. Less skilled people are also unlikely to participate in associative or volunteering activities.

Improving the health of citizens is a key policy in OECD countries, and more individuals with higher education report to be in good health than less educated counterparts. “The gap in those reporting being in good health between adults with the highest and lowest literacy proficiency stands at 23 percentage points,” notes the report.

Women seem to benefit more from improving skills in terms of reporting better health and having greater trust in others. The gap between people reporting that they can trust others is 19 percentage points between women with the highest and lowest literacy proficiency, and 15 percentage points among men.

So while governments in OECD countries and elsewhere worry mostly about job inequalities between the highly and less educated, there is a broader crisis of people with low skills proficiency facing not just economic but also health disadvantages, and political exclusion, among other social outcomes.

Wachira Kigotho