“Towards more and better jobs” may seem like a rather obvious theme for an important conference of OECD employment and labour ministers, chaired by François Fillon, the French employment and social affairs minister. After all, unemployment has been rising in almost all countries over the past two years and our economies need to start creating more jobs if they are to cut the unemployment rolls.

When Junichiro Koizumi, Japan’s prime minister, appointed five women to his cabinet in 2001, he was making history by creating his country’s most female government ever. Whether the corporate world follows suit is another matter.

After a decade of rising employment, innovative start-ups and widespread business euphoria, unemployment has started to increase again across the OECD. It seems that the rise in unemployment is less pronounced than was the case in previous bouts of economic weakness, and this reflects encouraging improvements in structural employment. Still, it is a stark reminder that the fight against high and persistent joblessness must remain at the top of the policy agenda.

The employment record of the OECD area over the last 10 years paints a mixed picture. On the positive side, employment has grown, by about 1% per year in 1991-2001. Governments appear to have responded to the chronically high unemployment of earlier years by introducing a range of structural reforms. But have they gone far enough?

In this Observer roundtable, we have invited employment and labour ministers from a cross-section of OECD countries to answer a straightforward question:

The standardised unemployment rate for the OECD area fell to 7.2% in July from 7.3% in June, but stood 0.2 percentage points higher than a year earlier.

OECD governments face a tough employment challenge. If employment patterns do not change, population ageing will imply a sharp deceleration of labour force growth during the next three decades – including absolute declines in nearly one-half of the OECD countries. This will threaten the solvency of important social programmes and create a drag on living standards.

We are getting older, but are we also getting sicker or less employable? Usually not, though a look at the trends does give rise to just such a question. In many OECD countries, the share of the working-age population receiving income-replacement benefits continued to increase in the 1990s, particularly for old age, disability, lone-parent and social assistance benefits. In some countries, most of the working age people who are neither employed nor studying receive some kind of income-replacement benefit.

It may sound like a truism to say that work should pay. But does it pay as much as it could, particularly for people on very low incomes? This is precisely what governments have been asking as they bid to get people off benefits and into employment.

Supply of training increases with firm size, but demand for courses by employees does not. One often overlooked reason for this is time, or rather, the lack of it.

The employment prospects of women, and older and unskilled workers would improve with training: this key employment policy message is borne out by the pattern of participation in workplace training. Older workers and women simply receive less of it.

“Remove your labour market rigidities” is a constant refrain governments are well familiar with in OECD countries, particularly (but not exclusively) those facing high unemployment. It is certainly the underlying message in the OECD’s Jobs Strategy issued in the mid-1990s, with its set of policy prescriptions as noteworthy for their market bias as their lack of social content: reform of overly generous unemployment benefits; removal of strict employment protection legislation; restrictions on trade union activities; and elimination or sharp reduction of minimum wages.

The greatest stimulus to employment is economic growth, says Thomas R. Vant, secretary-general of the Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) to the OECD. Mr Vant argues that the OECD Jobs Strategy is a blueprint that should be applied more seriously.

While there has been a century-long movement towards a shorter workweek, this trend has slowed in recent decades and appears to have stopped in a few countries.

Rachid is the first in line to apply for work when the factory comes to town. He is hired, along with a few of his friends. So far so good.

The 2003 meeting of OECD Employment and Labour Ministers is timely, as it will look at the acute problem posed by ageing societies, as well as discussing comprehensive policy changes to promote the employment of under-represented groups.