This study goes beyond looking at how the financial return to training varies with qualification level and investigates the relationship between literacy skills and the incomes of workers in the Australian labour market and whether this varies with level of education.
This research shows that older Australians use computers and the internet less than younger Australians. Therefore, in the short term, information and services aimed at older Australians will need to be provided in additional ways.
In recent decades Australian immigration policy has focused mostly on accepting high-skilled migrants. This report explores the question of whether participation in further training differs for these migrants compared with that of native-born workers in similar jobs. The research shows that foreign-born workers in Australia seem to receive the training they need, but this depends on whether or not they are native English speakers. Non-native English-speaking migrants demonstrate low training participation rates. They also have lower literacy skills and are less likely to be in employment.
This report investigates skill matches to job requirements for workers in Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada. It might be expected that differences between the four countries in economic growth, technological innovation and structural change in the labour market may have led to differences in job skill requirements and use. This research finds, however, that the broad match of workers to jobs that use their skills is quite similar for the four countries, although some differences in the patterns of skill use over time were identified. This is one of the research reports resulting from a three-year program of research ( ).