Professional learning and training engagement of healthcare labour in Norway and Sweden

Tanja Schroot, Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet), Norway

Demand for care workers will increase due to Europe’s ageing and steadily declining population. Recent data suggests that the number of people over 50 in need of long-term care will increase by around 21% between 2020 and 2050. However, the healthcare labour force is constantly shrinking. Around 40% of current medical staff are close to retirement age. For instance, the Norwegian healthcare system has faced persistent recruitment and staffing challenges in nursing and long-term care for decades (Hedlund Quintanilla et al., 2026). The number of people over the age of 80 in Norway is expected to increase by over 250,000 between 2020 and 2040 (Helsepersonellkommisjonen, 2023). At the same time, Norway experienced a shortage of 2,350 nurses in 2015, and it is estimated that this gap will widen significantly. In this context, professional on-the-job training and continuous upskilling and specialisation training programmes are considered vital for attracting and retaining a skilled healthcare workforce. This is particularly important in the highly feminised employment sector where there is high dropout and turnover due to the psychological strain of the demanding work tasks and the overlap with family obligations.

Against this background, this paper will discuss comparative data for healthcare workers in Norway and Sweden, illustrating how the following indicators are interlinked:
• the national distribution of their competences (key competences: literacy, numeracy, problem-solving)
• their training engagement and investment (financial and timely resources)
• their perceptions of further training needs

This investigation focuses on two countries at the forefront of adult training: Norway and Sweden. They have the highest participation rates in Europe, particularly among women in professional training. The analysis will use the latest secondary data sets provided by the OECD PIAAC study and the European Social Survey. This research has been conducted by the author within the MSCA Project SCILLED (Strategies for Competence Integration and Lifelong Learning in European Destinations), funded by the Marie-Curie Initiative of the European Commission from 2025 – 2027.

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More Training, Same Skills? Proficiency, Application, and Earnings in PIAAC Cycle 2 Singapore
Wan Ying Tay, Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore

Lifelong learning systems invest substantially in adult training, on the assumption that training raises workers' skills and labour markets reward those skills. Yet PIAAC evidence repeatedly shows that adult training has weak or non-significant associations with measured cognitive proficiency once educational attainment is controlled. This raises a long-standing puzzle: if training does not raise measured skills, through what channel does it generate labour-market value? This study examines an alternative: training generates value not by raising measured proficiency but by increasing the application of skills at work. PIAAC distinguishes two related but separate constructs. Cognitive proficiency is what individuals can demonstrate under standardised assessment in literacy, numeracy, and adaptive problem solving. Workplace skill use is how frequently and complexly individuals apply those capabilities at work, through reading, writing, numeracy, ICT, learning, task discretion, and influencing others. Two workers with similar literacy scores may engage very differently with reading at work: one routinely interpreting technical reports, the other rarely opening a document. Labour markets may reward differences in application more than test performance itself. The study uses Singapore's PIAAC Cycle 2 public-use microdata (OECD, 2024). The analytic sample is working-age adults aged 25-65 not in full-time education (n = 4,256); earnings analyses use employees (n approximately 2,927). Cognitive proficiency was measured across three domains using ten plausible values combined via Rubin's (1987) rules. Skill use was captured through seven IRT-scaled behavioural indices. Path models linked qualifications, training, proficiency, skill use, and earnings, controlling for age, gender, immigrant background, parental education, and occupation. Robustness checks confirmed the pattern. Four findings emerge. First, training has no significant independent association with cognitive proficiency once qualifications and occupation are controlled. Second, qualifications remain the dominant predictor of skills, workplace outcomes, and earnings. Third, training is significantly associated with six of seven skill-use domains: trained workers do not test as more proficient, but report greater engagement in complex workplace practices. Fourth, when skill-use variables are added, the training coefficient on earnings attenuates by approximately 36%, suggesting workplace application is an important pathway through which training is associated with labour-market outcomes. The cross-sectional design limits causal interpretation. Findings nonetheless suggest the labour-market value of adult training operates through workplace application as much as through skill acquisition itself. Results converge with parallel Singapore evidence (Sheng, Chia, and Sadik 2025) on credential persistence and job design.

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Career change in Finland as field-of-study mismatch: utilizing Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data
Tuomo Kuivalainen, University of Eastern Finland, Finland

This presentation examines how career change can be identified and profiled using Finnish PIAAC data. The aim of the research is to illustrate how different methodologies can help identify sections from the PIAAC data beyond the intended research questions, in this case by identifying individuals from the data who have changed careers. Career change is a rather ubiquitous term in both literature, media and policies relating to work, careers and education. A single linear continuum does not accurately represent the reality of modern careers, as career change is an ever more common and expected part of them. Rather, modern career theory emphasizes career as an ongoing, lifelong process with many different roles and positions, as changes in jobs and careers have become accepted and necessary. Education is essential to career change, since it inherently requires transition into a new occupation or field where previous skills are largely irrelevant and new training is undertaken. Since career change can be seen as a process beginning from intentions to change career until having successfully done so, the PIAAC data cannot measure the entire process of career change. PIAAC data also does not specifically address the status of participants’ career change, so utilizing the data in this regard is done with further measures by identifying field-of-study mismatch. Field-of-study mismatch occurs when workers educated in a particular field work in another – while this does not cover career change as an ongoing process, the mismatch does capture cases where an individual has spent time, effort and resources in getting an education in a particular field yet they have ended up working in another. The mismatch is derived by filtering the ISIC-classification of job of the participants against the field of education variable. This mismatch in the PIAAC data has previously been examined from the perspective of e.g. labour supply and demand, or qualifications mismatch, but not career change. Career change has been examined regarding e.g. the motives of the change, specific fields or individual cases, but the PIAAC data offers a new perspective of adult skills and background variables to the Finnish context of career change. The data has its limitations, as the PIAAC data was not collected with any explicit career change variables. However, the profiles of career changers found in the unique data set can be utilized to frame further research into career change, illustrate associations between career change and the skills and background characteristics of the participants, as well as to examine policies relating to working life and lifelong learning.