European Classification of Skills/Competences, Qualifications and Occupations

The Commission welcomes the political agreement by the European Parliament and Member States on the European Year of Skills.

ESCO Testimonials are interviews with ESCO implementers conducted by the Commission to gain a better understanding of ESCO's strengths and challenges. In this case, learn more about how ESCO is used for regional development and how it fosters synergies and interoperability among various stakeholders.

Skills-based approaches need a common and up-to-date skills language to achieve their full potential. Skills ontologies, like ESCO and O*NET, allow for applicability in different contexts, but require mappings between them to relate, reuse and transfer knowledge. This challenge invites participants to implement novel ideas on how to keep mappings between ontologies up-to-date in a dynamic context. The challenge will use a hybrid method with human annotation, using different versions of the ESCO and mapping to O*NET.

The European Commission has launched public consultation to evaluate the performance and impact of four agencies working under the remit of the DG EMPL. The public consultation will assess how agencies have performed in relation to their objectives and mandates and identify areas for improvement. The public consultation is available in all official languages and is open until 25 May 2023.

Do not miss out the chance to join the 2023 European Year of Skills Festival! Organised by the Pact for Skills, the Festival aims to inspire stakeholders and the public to invest in skills. The main event will take place in Cité des Métiers in Brussels, but the hybrid format will allow participants from across Europe to join. Deadline to post your content is 20 April 2023.

After two years of online meetings, the ESCO Member States Working Group met in person on March 15, 2023 in Brussels. The ESCO team discussed the role of data science in the continuous maintenance of ESCO, the recent developments in EURES mapping, and plans for the next major version ESCO update, which will follow policy developments of the European Year of Skills and thus be published in Q1 of 2024.

One of the tasks of the INCREAS project was to describe occupations and related skills in the Cultural Heritage Sector, while analyzing sector needs. The ESCO team attended the final conference to discuss this feedback and presented the most recent developments and upcoming updates that may be beneficial to the Cultural Heritage sector, as well as to encourage collaboration to continue.

This year's PES Network conference "Empowering the Workforce, Bridging the Skills Gap" focused on the rapidly changing skills requirements of the European labour market. The ESCO team participated to exchange ideas and views on how to identify and understand the skills needs of the future labour market, develop skills for digital and green transitions, support those impacted by automation and digitalisation, and move towards more frequent re- and upskilling.

AI is increasingly being used in labour market matching, but there are still barriers to adoption such as organisation and people readiness, robustness, bias, privacy, transparency and explainability. This paper reviews the literature and recent policy developments in this field and interviews with key stakeholders.

The EURES report identifies the most common and severe labour shortages and surpluses in Europe and explores the main causes. The study identified 29 countries with labour shortages and 24 with surpluses, with most shortages in software, health care, construction and engineering. The largest surpluses are in office occupations and in occupations related to the humanities and arts. Along with the report, you can access the dashboard and work with the data yourself.

This report looks at measures implemented at national level to tackle labour shortages in the health, care, and IT sectors, as well as those arising from the twin green and digital transition. It also looks at the impact of the war on energy and commodity prices.

This study examines the emerging relationship between microcredentials and qualification systems. Information gathered through an online survey among European VET providers, national authorities, employee and employer organisations was complemented by in-depth country case studies and interviews with Cedefop’s ReferNet network.

A new report analyses recent data and expert knowledge on skills shortages and relevant policy responses across the EU Member States, during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the digital and green transitions.

The European Commission published the report on Intra-EU Labour Mobility 2022 that identifies trends in free movement of workers and their family members, based on the latest available data (2021/2020). This edition also includes findings on cross-border mobility (i.e. those residing in one Member State and commuting for work to another Member State) and the mobility in different occupations.

The Australian Industry and Skills Committee established the Digital Transformation Expert Panel in late 2019 to consider how Australia's vocational education and training system can respond to digital change. The Digital Capability for Workforce Skills Final Report details the development and potential application of this framework: the Australian Digital Capability Framework (ADCF).