Italy has a relatively low
proportion of university graduates and many of those who do have
degrees score relatively low in terms of skills, the OECD said
in a report on Thursday.
"Italy has relatively few tertiary educated workers and the
inflow of new graduates to the labour market is relatively
small. The share of 25-34 year-old Italians with
university-level higher education is just 20% as compared with
the OECD average of 30% for the same age group," the Skills
Strategy Diagnostic report for Italy said.
"Yet, adult graduates in Italy have among the lowest average
literacy and numeracy scores compared with tertiary graduates in
other countries (26th out of 29 OECD countries, in both
dimensions)".
The report said Italy is the only G7 country with a higher
share of tertiary educated workers in routine occupations (tasks
that can be accomplished following a set of specific and
well-defined rules) than in non-routine ones (tasks that entail
performing more complicated activities, such as creative problem
solving and decision making).
Italy's economic potential is limited by low skills, OECD
Secretary-General Angel Gurría said Thursday as he presented the
report.
"Italy is currently trapped in a 'low-skill equilibrium,'" he
said.
"The low supply of skills is accompanied by low demand from
firms".
The report identified several ways in which Italy can tackle
this low skill equilibrium. These included policies to: improve
the entrepreneurial and managerial skills of employers,
especially in family owned enterprises and in SMEs; disseminate
Industry 4.0 technologies and related initiatives to all firms,
particularly smaller ones; encourage the use of wage incentives
and bonuses linked to worker productivity to make fuller use of
available skills; and promote cost sharing through tax credits,
so that SMEs operating within the same supply chains can afford
to hire skilled workers.
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