Leiden, Netherlands, 14 May 2025 – At the latest SkiLMeeT & LISER seminar, our researcher Ulrich Zierahn-Weilage of Utrecht University presented new insights into how digital technologies are transforming vocational training systems and impacting labour market outcomes across Germany.
The hybrid event, held on 13 May 2025 and attended by 35 participants, featured findings from Zierahn-Weilage’s paper “Expertise at Work: New Technologies, New Skills, and Worker Impacts”, co-authored with Cäcilia Lipowski of the ifo Institute and Anna Salomons, also from Utrecht University.
Zierahn-Weilage’s presentation highlighted how rapid technological change is prompting updates to vocational training curricula. The researchers analysed connections between training content and breakthrough patents, and showed that occupations most exposed to emerging technologies are also those where curricula evolve the fastest. Rather than focusing on traditional routine tasks, training is increasingly geared towards equipping students with non-automatable digital and social skills.
These shifts are producing measurable effects. Workers who receive training aligned with new technological demands are more likely to remain in occupation they’ve trained for, and to experience wage gains. At the same time, these changes pose a challenge for older workers whose skills have become outdated, potentially widening generational divides in the labour market.
The study also finds that firms are not passive in this transformation. Employers ramp up capital investments when they hire workers with tech-relevant skills, particularly those emerging from high-tech training programmes.
Access the paper here
