This paper was presented at the International Symposium on Lifelong Learning for Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Development: Developing a Research Agenda for the Asia-Pacific in Hong Kong, 12-13 January 2011. Tom Karmel suggests that there are four implications of an ageing population: the need to improve labour force participation and productivity; the ageing population will provide a 'demographic dividend' because there will be fewer young people to school; increasing life expectancy changes the arithmetic of the return to investments in human capital and makes investment in the middle-aged more attractive; and ageing populations in developed countries provide an opportunity for developing countries through the export of labour services.
This paper was prepared for the Australian Government's National Resources Sector Employment Taskforce, which was created to investigate the extent to which skill shortages might impact on the development of the resources sector. It applies historical apprenticeship commencement rates to population projections to provide an estimate of the number of tradespeople likely to be working in the resources sector between 2010 20 at a detailed level and by region.
This paper was presented to a meeting of the Wellington Exchange, an international group of higher education officials, in December 2008.
This paper presents a series of stylised facts from the research literature on vocational education and training and older people. It includes the following topics: Education is front end loaded; VET is really important in providing older people a second chance; Increases in educational participation of older persons have been very modest; Education makes a large difference to workforce engagement of older people; Qualifications obtained later in life appear to pay off, at least in terms of workforce engagement; ...but training is no panacea; Skills learnt on the job are very important; and Attitudes of both employers and employees create barriers for training for older people.
The ageing society has been attracting the attention of policy-makers in Australia and in many other countries. This paper considers the labour market for the traditional trades in Australia over the next 40 years and investigates whether the ageing society will pose a workforce problem. The broad conclusion is that the ageing society will significantly impact on the size of the potential trades workforce, but that this is unlikely to result in shortages. Rather, any shortage is more likely to occur if the trades lose their attractiveness relative to other occupations. Moreover, the age distribution of the trades workforce will remain largely unaltered.
One of the most striking features of the modern world is its changing demographic profile. In almost any policy arena, the issue of demographic change (or ageing) sits alongside globalisation, climate change and the knowledge revolution as areas which are transforming societies, including the ways in which we organise and go about our work activities. This significant and worldwide phenomenon motivated an international meeting of a number of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) research agencies, hosted by NCVER in October 2006. This publication is the result of this meeting and contains the presented papers and comments by discussants. What emerges from the papers is a picture of a worldwide trend that touches many aspects of TVET and the labour market, but one which needs to take into account the very different economies and societies of the world.
Discussion about Australia's ageing population has focused on the importance of increasing labour force participation rates of older people. This paper examines the influence of education and training on the participation of older people in the labour market, and the pay-off of undertaking education and training as an older-person compared to earlier in life. On the whole, the results indicate the more qualifications the better, and education, lifelong learning and training are beneficial to maintaining and increasing employment rates. Qualifications acquired later in life have as good, and in some cases, better, pay-off to employment-to-population rates for older age groups, suggesting education is an effective strategy for older people seeking employment. The authors also suggest that increasing education levels will partially offset the impact of ageing on labour force participation.