Abstract The deteriorating position ofless-qualified workers has been a growing cause for concern in many OECD countries in the 1980s and 1990s. As well as contributing directly to rising inequality, it compounds the difficulties faced by workers already disadvantaged in the labour market for reasons of age, gender, or race. This chapter documents the employment record of the less qualified and examines the factors that help to explain the variety of experience among OECD countries. The first section discusses some tricky but important problems about how to represent the impact of educational qualifications on employment. Cross-country patterns of differences in employment rates by education are then reported for the OECD countries. Section 2 discusses a range of factors that may bear on the extent of employment disadvantage suffered by the least qualified. These include the usual suspects, such as overall demand for labour, trade with the South, and aspects oflabour market flexibility, but we have also examined the dispersion of educational achievement in the labour force.