The resurgence of interest in recent years in the importance of education and training in furthering the goals of economic progress, fuller employment, and social integration coincides with a new emphasis on the need for “lifelong learning,” both to respond to current changes in the organization and technology of production and service delivery and to counter the socially disruptive effects of increased labor market flexibility.

Although there has been a great deal of interest in and research on initial education prior to labor market entry, continuing job-related training is also believed to be highly influential in determining both corporate or organizational performance as well as individual earnings and career development, although the empirical research on this topic is much more limited. Given that the impact of initial educational attainment on both labor market entry and on subsequent career development is already well established in the research literature, we focus in this chapter on continuing education and training of employed workers.

It should be noted that there has also been a parallel interest in the effects of education and training targeted on the unemployed, and that this field has generated a substantial body of sophisticated empirical research that has already been extensively reviewed (see, e.g., Fay, 1996; Friedlander et al., 1997; Heckman et al., 1999). Most empirical work has been confined to relatively short-term employment and earnings effects.