Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives: A Strategic Approach to Skills Policies

The OECD Skills Strategy provides an integrated, cross-government strategic framework to help countries understand more about how to invest in skills in a way that will transform lives and drive economies. It will help countries to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their existing national skills pool and skills systems, benchmark them internationally, and develop policies for improvement. In particular, the strategy provides the foundations upon which governments can work effectively with all interested parties – national, local and regional government, employers, employees, and learners – and across all relevant policy areas to: develop the right skills to respond to the needs of the labour market; ensure that where skills exist they are fully utilized; tackle unemployment and help young people to gain a foothold in the labour market in a way that makes best use of their skills; stimulate the creation of more high-skilled and high value-added jobs to compete more effectively in today’s global economy; exploit linkages across policy fields.