Using the 1995 cohort of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth, this project examines how long it takes for young people to move from education to work, and identifies factors that distinguish people who are able to move quickly into employment from those who take many months to find work.
Employment options have altered dramatically over the past 15 years, with full-time and permanent employment no longer the 'standard'. This report examines changes in employment modes for various groups of workers and its effect on the level and extent of skills development. The report finds that there is reduced support for training by employers as a result of the changing employment patterns, and this means that skills development will increasingly need to be funded by workers themselves and the taxpayer through the public vocational education and training system.
A highly skilled workforce is widely viewed as essential for prosperity in economies characterised by rapid technological change. However, the development of high level skills across the workforce is expensive and requires major investment from individuals, governments and employers. This report explores an alternative approach to estimating Australian employers' contribution to skills development of the workforce. The measure is based on the increase of workers' productivity as a result of learning skills on the job. Workers' productivity is obtained by observing how fast wages grow with additional years of general work experience and of tenure with the current employer. The author estimates that, on this basis, total investment in employment-based training is much larger than previously believed.