Job requirements and lifelong learning for older workers

Australia’s ageing population has prompted a policy focus on keeping older workers in the workforce longer. Of relevance to this is how older workers maintain and update their skills through participation in further education and training. The lower participation of older workers in training has been well documented. Reasons suggested for this have included fewer opportunities provided by employers and less time to recoup a return on the investment in training. A further factor may be whether or not there is a real need to upskill in order to stay in the labour force.

The first report from this research program looked at the relationship between individuals’ literacy and numeracy skills and their use in the workplace, and paid particular attention to older workers. This second report investigates whether this relationship between skill level and skill use affects the propensity to undertake further education and training, especially for older workers.

Key findings

• Across all age groups, workers who report that their jobs are demanding, relative to their skills, are more likely to participate in further education and training. This finding suggests that, in addition to individual characteristics, features of the job also influence who undertakes training.

• Participation in further education and training is lower for older workers compared with younger workers, although they still show higher participation as relative skills use increases. The decline in participation for older workers is much stronger among workers with relatively low levels of education.

The first report from this program of research, which looks at the relationship between skill level and job requirements, is available from the NCVER website. An overview that summarises the findings from these two reports is also available.

Tom Karmel
Managing Director, NCVER

This study investigates the relationship between job requirements, individual skills and the participation of workers in further education and training, paying particular attention to older workers in Australia. The empirical analysis allows inferences about the extent to which workers of different age groups participate in further education, given the relationship between their individual skills and the skills required in their jobs.

There are good reasons for studying the relationship between job requirements and lifelong learning for older workers, the foremost being that an analysis of skill-related tasks may provide evidence about the way job requirements and skill demands are changing over time; this contrasts with analysis based solely on occupational classifications. Such an analysis also allows inferences about the relationship between job requirements and the propensity of workers to undertake further education and training.

The empirical analysis of the relationship between skill (mis)matches and participation in education and training may also help to distinguish workers who have an incentive to upgrade their skills from those who do not. Such an analysis may also help in gaining a better understanding of the nature of careers.

A parallel study (Ryan & Sinning 2009) used the Survey of Aspects of Literacy (SAL) and the Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALLS) Survey to investigate the match between individuals’ numeracy and literacy skills and the skills used in their jobs. These surveys, conducted ten years apart, contain comparable information on measures of worker skills—notably their literacy skills. Measures of individuals’ skills are based on the outcomes of tests designed to assess levels of numeracy and literacy, as well as on self-assessments about how good their skills are. This exceeds the information available for analysis in most studies, where educational attainment is used as a proxy for skills. Job requirements are measured by self-reports of individuals about their literacy and numeracy use at work.

Further information in these surveys permit an investigation of the extent to which—given a particular skill level—different measures of job complexity affect the likelihood of participating in further education and training. Since participation in further education and training may vary substantially over time and across age groups, these variations need to be addressed in the empirical analysis to separate period, birth cohort and ageing effects.

In this study, participation in education and training courses is measured by self-reports of individuals about:

• participation in education or training in the previous 12 months
• enrolment in a technical and further education (TAFE) or technical college in the previous 12 months.

The major findings and their implications are highlighted in the points below.

Skills and training

• The relative job complexity with respect to literacy is highest for workers whose skills are about average.
• The ratio between job complexity and skills is lower for low-skilled workers, suggesting that literacy use is less relevant in jobs for low-skilled workers.
• The ratio between job complexity and skills is also lower for high-skilled workers, because they tend to have fewer opportunities to apply their high skills at work.
• The relationship between the relative numeracy skill measure and numeracy skills is declining, indicating that low-skilled workers are required to apply their (relatively low) numeracy skills at work relatively often, while high-skilled workers have fewer opportunities to make use of their skills at work.
• The ratio between job complexity and skills increases for older workers.
• Workers who attended education or training courses in the previous 12 months report higher job requirements, relative to their skills, than workers who did not attend courses.

Determinants of education and training participation

• The proportion of workers who undertook education or training courses was higher at higher levels of education.
• The proportion of young workers who undertake further education is substantially higher than the proportion of older workers.
• The decline in the propensity to undertake education or training courses at higher ages is much stronger among relatively low-educated workers.
• Workers in occupations that typically require high skills are more likely to undertake education and training courses than workers in other occupations.
• Educational attainment is a strong predictor of further education and training participation, but does not seem to affect participation in formal vocational and educational training (VET) courses.
• While full-time employment and the size of the employer are strong predictors of training participation, these factors do not affect participation in formal VET courses.
• Workers are more likely to attend training courses if their job requirements increase in relation to literacy or numeracy use. By contrast, formal VET course participation only increases if relative literacy requirements increase.

Skill matches and the role of demographic factors

• A positive relationship between relative job complexity and the propensity to participate in further education and training may be observed for different measures.
• The effects of all relative measures of job complexity on the propensity to participate in further education and training courses vary considerably across age groups.
• An increase in the relative job complexity increases formal VET course participation only if workers are relatively young.
• Most participants in further education and training are working in jobs that require either both high literacy and high numeracy skills or both low literacy and low numeracy skills.