News

On 15 July, Commissioner Nicolas Schmit hosted a High Level Expert Live Discussion on the renewed European Alliance for Apprenticeships (EAfA). The Commissioner was joined by two German ministers to discuss key issues and commitments that will support VET across Europe.

To celebrate the World Youth Skills day, ESCO demonstrates its contribution towards the achievement of a sustainable integration of the younger generations in the labour market. Click on the link below to discover more about how ESCO supports education and training institutions, companies and young jobseekers.

The COVID-19 Skills watcher offers a unique overview of skills that occur most frequently across occupations in every sector, where sectors are grouped by the level of impact of Covid-19 on their economic output. This tool was developed linking the ESCO classification to ILO real-time data. To play with the tool and learn more about its application, click the link below.

The European Commission is working to deliver the next major version of ESCO (v1.1), which will be released by the end of 2021. The ESCO team is currently meeting with relevant stakeholders such as Blueprint projects and sectoral associations to collect feedback and suggestions for the update of the occupation and skills pillar. To learn more about the timeline, see the infographic attached. If you want to share your feedback and help ESCO in the update process, please join our online forum at the link available below.

In April 2020, the ESCO Maintenance Committee (MAI) met virtually to discuss and share feedback on the ESCO Skills hierarchy. Following a period of testing, MAI members expressed their expectations, shared their testing methods, and suggested improvements and recommendations for ESCO’s next steps.

In July 2020, the Commission released two minor versions of ESCO (v1.0.6 and v1.0.7). The most important changes included in these new versions are the translation of the descriptions of all ESCO concepts in 27 languages and the migration of qualifications data from ESCO to Europass.

ESCO version 1.0.5 includes the important improvement of a skills hierarchy. The total of the 13.485 ESCO skills are placed in skill groups distributed across a three-level structure. Skill groups of the hierarchy are available in the 27 ESCO languages. Users will be able to download the hierarchy in various formats, use the API for downloading the hierarchy and browse the hierarchy on the skills section of the portal.

On 28 May 2020, ESCO participated in the “Bridging the digital gaps across Europe together” webinar organised by the Interoperability Academy of the Commission’s Directorate General for Informatics (DIGIT). Participants at the webinar had the opportunity to learn about ESCO, its functionality and some use-cases.

ESCO plays an important role in implementing the new Europass framework. Thanks to its rich dataset, it helps Europass users to identify and describe their work experience, skills and interests. When creating a Europass e-profile, citizens will be able to select occupations and skills from ESCO to describe their career path.

Skilllab, an ESCO implementer, participated in the European hackathon to create solutions related to the Covid-19 crisis. Based on the ESCO data model, Skilllab generated a pathway-graph on occupations to create direct matches between the occupations at risk and those in demand. This tool aims to help European citizens and Employment Services in the shift between industries and sectors, providing solutions to fill skill gaps.

Recently, the European Commission started the second phase of the pilot project to test how Machine Learning technologies could support the automated linking of learning outcomes of qualifications with ESCO skills. This has been tested in different EU languages to showcase the potential of ESCO in bridging the labour market and the world of education and training. The results of the first phase of the pilot are available on the portal.

The new Europass will be a valuable tool for people to create applications for jobs and courses and find information on studying and working in different European countries, as well as storing their digital diplomas.

On 8 May 2020, the Commission has released an improved version of the European classification of Skills/Competences, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO v1.0.5). This new minor version also includes the important improvement of a skills hierarchy. The total of the 13.485 skills included in the ESCO taxonomy are now placed in skill groups distributed across a three-level structure. Users will be able to download the hierarchy in various formats, use the API for downloading the hierarchy free of charge and browse the hierarchy on the skills section of the portal. Other improvements include corrections of errors in translations and spelling mistakes, as well as improvements to API functionalities.