Statistical approaches to the measurement of skills — The state of play in Europe within the European Statistical System - Products Statistical working papers

This report from the Eurostat technical group on measuring skills provides a thorough and critical review of data sources in this domain, both within and outside the European Statistical System (ESS), in a European context. It starts by introducing the concept of skills as an aspect of human capital and describes the main approaches to capturing skills in data: indirect measurement (mainly through qualifications and occupations), direct measurement (testing and job vacancy data) and self reporting. It then sets the scene for the policy discussion, explores policy makers’ main requirements as regards the development of statistics on skills and reviews the statistical data sources for measuring skills within the four dimensions identified: skills supply, skills demand, skills mismatch and skills development. Gaps in the data on skills are discussed in the last section.