Page 13 - IDEA Study 3 2018 Low skilled

3. Who are the Low-skilled in the Czech Republic? The share (and number) of the low-skilled in the Czech Republic is rather small. While the low-skilled in the Czech Republic perform worse in terms of employment and labor market participation, their share in the population is much smaller than in the majority of EU countries. They form less than 7% of the Czech population compared to the EU average of about 23% (Eurostat). In 2016, there were about 450 thousand low-skilled individuals. Among women, the share of low-skilled was 8.7%, while among men it was only 5.4% (Table 1). About 61% of the 20-64-year-old low-skilled are women. Note that women in the Czech Republic also dominate the group of individuals with the highest level of skills, but not so substantially (about 52% of people with tertiary education are women). Table 1. Skill Distribution by Gender Source: LFS data 2014-2016, own calculation. The share of the low-skilled has declined over time, but the trend may reverse. The share of the low-skilled in the population of 20-64-year-old individuals has declined steadily over time, with 12.6% in 2000 and to less than 7% in 2016 (see Table A1 in the Appendix). This is mostly due to the high share of low-skilled among the elderly (even today, almost 12% of individuals aged 55-64 are low-skilled, see Table 2). However, the younger cohorts (aged 20-24) have exhibited some increase in the share of the low-skilled in recent years, which may eventually reverse this trend (Appendix Table A2). This trend reversal has also been documented by the European Commission (2017), indicating a rise in the share of early school-leavers among individuals aged 18-24 from 5.4% to 6.6% between 2013 and 2016. male female Total Low-skilled 5.4% 8.7% 7.0% Lower middle-skilled 41.3% 28.0% 34.7% Upper middle-skilled 33.5% 41.1% 37.2% High-skilled 19.8% 22.3% 21.1% 11