Together with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Germany's Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs is holding a high-level conference at the AXICA convention and conference centre in Berlin today. The title of the conference is the "High-Level Policy Forum on the New OECD Jobs Strategy". Some 20 ministers and state secretaries, as well as nearly 300 high-ranking international guests, including representatives from the fields of policy-making, business, trade unions and administrations, the OECD, the European Commission and other international organisations are meeting to discuss common employment policy challenges. The OECD will present its new Employment Outlook 2017 at the conference. The Employment Outlook regularly reports on the most recent employment trends in OECD countries.
Federal Minister Andrea Nahles:
I am pleased that this year's OECD Employment Outlook reflects the very good overall labour market situation in Germany. It is particularly encouraging that there is no contradiction between high levels of employment and high levels of job quality. We can have both things at the same time: more jobs and better jobs. The increasing spread of digital technologies and the changing world of work make it necessary for us to focus even more on maintaining employability and promoting further education. This is underlined by the OECD in its explicit recommendation that in the future we must be better able to help people shape their own occupational biographies. The OECD's analysis encourages me to continue to promote approaches such as employment insurance and personal activity accounts. With the personal activity accounts I would like for the state to give people the means to take time off for further education or starting a business, for example. That way we can provide a basis for the much-talked-about "lifelong learning" and successfully manage the digital transformation.