Determinants of adult slills and competencies – results of the PIAAC survey

Janko Muršak and Marko Radovan

Summary:  This paper explores the differences in the skills development of adults with regard to their employment status, age and industry. Previous research has shown that age, characteristics of employment and training opportunities in the workplace strongly influence the development of skills and competencies. In this paper, we tested these findings using PIAAC survey data. The results did not confirm our assumption that employment has a positive impact on the achieved level of skills as the data for Slovenia show that unemployed adults at the same educational level achieve better results in all three measured sections. The prediction of the effect of age was confirmed as, with age, previously reached levels of skills decrease, particularly strongly for adults with lower educational attainment. Among the sectors we didn’t notice major differences in the development of individual skills; the highest results in terms of professional activity are achieved by managers and professionals and the lowest by elementary occupations. From the results the need thus arises for a reconsideration of the priority areas and the share of public funds in the National Adult Education Program aimed at developing infrastructure for adult education and individual areas of education.