"European Classification of Skills/Competences, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO) newsletter" Newsletter Issues

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to update the ESCO Occupations Pillar (18/05/2021)

The Commission is building machine learning models to suggest potential matches to ESCO occupations based on input such as job titles and occupation labels. This activity is related to the challenge of mapping textual descriptions of occupations to the existing ESCO occupations hierarchy. The following article showcases examples of occupation normalisation and mapping new job titles for existing/new occupations.

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to maintain the ESCO Occupations Pillar (18/05/2021)

ESCO has been developed by experts and designed following a top-down hierarchical structure. But can we represent ESCO data in a different way to gain further insights? To answer this question, the European Commission is investigating the use of AI, and in particular representation learning. This article illustrates how artificial intelligence can assist in shaping the future versions of ESCO. 

ESCO Skill-Occupation Matrix Tables: linking occupation and skill groups (18/05/2021)

The ESCO Skill-Occupation Matrix Tables are now available to connect ISCO-08 occupation groups (rather than one single occupation) to ESCO skills hierarchical groups (rather than one single skill). With these tables, ESCO implementers are free to choose different ESCO crosswalks between the occupation and skills pillar at various levels of granularity, depending on their use case.

The European Lung Foundation launches an ESCO based-survey (03/06/2021)

The European Lung Foundation in collaboration with patient representatives and occupational health experts produced the Covid-19 and Workplace Tool. It supports anyone who has questions about going to their workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic, by asking questions about citizens' concerns and providing advice on steps that can make the workplace safer. This tool uses ESCO to detect the occupation of workers filling the survey.

The use of ESCO in Croatia to deliver Labour Market Intelligence (18/05/2021)

The Ministry of Labour, Pension System, Family and Social Policy in Croatia (MRSOP) has implemented ESCO to develop the National Platform for Advanced Analytics of Labour Market’s Mechanics and Dynamics. This platform enables Croatian policy makers to interact with combined data originating from various sources to present occupation and skills data divided into several thematic report groups, such as skill demand and supply.

The use of ESCO by JobsIreland (18/05/2021)

JobsIreland is the Irish Public Employment Service of the Department of Social Protection. They offer a free job advertising service to employers and enable job seekers to search for jobs and create a profile to match their skills and experience with available jobs, using the ESCO classification as a common language.

ESCO implementation in the National Employment Portal in Albania (03/06/2021)

The Albanian National Agency for Information Society, through contractor Communication Progress, has recently developed the National Employment Portal, for the Albanian National Employment and Skills Agency. The portal uses ESCO to support the Albanian labour market leveraging on information such as work experience and skills of candidates.

A Public-private partnership in Chile launches RELINK: a platform promoting labour reconversion, powered by ESCO (18/05/2021)

Relink is the new digital platform created by a public-private partnership between the National Training and Employment Service of the Chilean Ministry of Labour, the Sociedad de Fomento Fabril and its Organismo de Intermediación Laboral, and the Inter-American Development Bank. It provides upskilling and re-skilling opportunities for individuals and companies, considering the challenges provided by the current technological and digital transformation in Latin America.

ESCO in the global skills taxonomy proposed by the World Economic Forum (03/06/2021)

The World Economic Forum has developed a framework for a global skills taxonomy to support the shift toward a skills-based labour market. The proposed taxonomy builds on the recognised work taken forward by ESCO and the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), enriched with skill trends highlighted in the Forum’s ongoing insights on the future of work.

ESCO and Skilllab: creating a data-rich environment (03/06/2021)

Skilllab, an ESCO implementer, has recently published the White Paper "ESCO and the Creation of a Data-Rich Environment. An Opportunity for the EU Labour Market". The paper is aimed at providing information on the adoption of ESCO, its role in supporting European Public Employment Services and the EU Skills Agenda, and other benefits associated with its implementation.

Boost.rs research conducted using ESCO (07/06/2021)

Boostrs, an ESCO implementer, has conducted studies to investigate changes in the labour market. The white papers available at the links below aim to answer some of the most pressing questions related to automation, soft skills, and remote work.

European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan: inspiring organisations around the world to improve skills and employment (07/06/2021)

The Commission discussed about the possible use of ESCO by Morocco and Israel and the potential it has for these countries. One peer-learning activity took place to support the Israeli Public employment Service in taking up ESCO. Moreover, the Commission presented ESCO to stakeholders of the THAMM project in Morocco.

Webinar on ESCO – All digital (03/06/2021)

On the 13th of April 2021, All Digital invited the Commission to hold a webinar on ESCO for its members. All Digital is a pan-European association which focuses on supporting the development of digital skills and it represents organisations that work with 25,000 digital competence centres. The possibility to include ESCO in some of the projects run by the All Digital members emerged and further discussions are set to take place in the future.

EURES and ESCO Workshop: Enhancing Job Mobility through a Common Language (18/05/2021)

EU Member States are currently mapping their national classifications of occupations (and skills, where available) to the ESCO classification, guided by the EURES legislation. The EURES and ESCO teams support this activity by organising a number of webinars. In the last training session, which took place on 9 and 10 March 2021, participants discussed the mapping process and its recurrent challenges, exchanged experiences on the adoption of the ESCO classification, and shared insights from their own experiences.

Interactive workshop on the usage of ESCO in Europass (03/06/2021)

On the 4th of March 2021, the Commission organised an interactive workshop for its Europass National Centres (NECs) regarding ESCO. The goal of the event was to present the ESCO classification and how it is implemented in Europass, answer to participants’ questions and discuss best practices and ideas for improvement.

External publications in the new ESCO portal (26/01/2021)

Following feedback received from ESCO implementers, a new section will soon be included in the ESCO portal to promote academic papers, articles or reports which make use of ESCO in their methodology. This will support the share of knowledge within the ESCO community and contribute to mutual learning among European and international actors.

ESCO as the reference skills taxonomy for Labour Market Intelligence in Tunisia and Ukraine (29/01/2021)

Working with the data science team of Burning Glass Europe (Italy), the European Training Foundation (ETF) collected and processed hundreds of thousands of online job vacancies over 8 consecutive months in 2020 (April-December). The data system uses ESCO as the reference for machine-classification of skills to provide insights on skills and occupational features and dynamics of the Tunisian and Ukrainian labour markets.

ESCO V1.1: Consultation on the pre-release (27/01/2021)

In the period between mid-December 2020 and mid-January 2021, the Commission launched a consultation on a pre-release draft of the ESCO next major version (v1.1). The draft is an updated version of the classification. New concepts (occupations, skills, knowledge concepts) have been drafted following a one-year long process of research, feedback processing and discussion with sectoral experts and European associations. ESCO v1.1 will be published at the end of 2021, following a series of consultations with ESCO stakeholders including EU Member States.

ESCO to map career causeways: a new system developed by NESTA (26/01/2021)

The UK-based innovation foundation NESTA has built a recommendation algorithm to provide guidance on how workers (in the UK, France and Italy) can transition out of occupations that are most at risk of automation. The approach uses the ESCO classification to build detailed occupation profiles, measure occupation similarity, and identify viable, desirable and safe transitions.

ESCO for LAC: adapting the European classification to Latin America and the Caribbean countries (26/01/2021)

The Inter-American Development Bank developed a machine learning model to analyse job vacancies in LAC countries using ESCO occupations and skills. This note is intended to be a starting point and set of considerations for policymakers who may be considering, or already embarking on, similar efforts to use ESCO or other taxonomical structures to help better analyse, understand and use skills-level information for decision making.

SkillLab’s growth and ambitious plans using the ESCO classification (27/01/2021)

The Amsterdam-based social startup that develops an AI-driven solution building on the ESCO classification has proven its value for the international labour market, being awarded with an investment of EUR 1.5 Million from Rubio Impact Ventures. SkillLab’s model allows people to identify their unique skill set and connects them to education and employment opportunities, generating highly personalised career pathways.

ESCO at the online meet-up organised by the Intelligence Group (29/01/2021)

The Intelligence Group, an international data and tech company, is holding a series of webinars to discuss labour market data-related topics. The first webinar was dedicated to ESCO. During the presentation, the ESCO team gave an overview of the classification, shared examples of the use of ESCO by implementers to run data analysis activities, informed on relevant news and presented the mission of current and future data science works. The presentation is available on YouTube, following the link below.

New updates in the ESCO classification (06/07/2020)

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.

The ESCO skills hierarchy goes live (02/07/2020)

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.

Linking learning outcomes of qualifications with ESCO skills: updates on the pilot project (02/07/2020)

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.

ESCO and the new Europass: occupations and skills for lifelong career management (02/07/2020)

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.

Covid-19 Skills Watcher (10/07/2020)

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.

ESCO in the fight against the Covid-19 crisis: the case of Skilllab (02/07/2020)

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.

ESCO for Youth (15/07/2020)

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.

Discussion on the Skills Hierarchy with the ESCO Maintenance Committee (06/07/2020)

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.

ESCO supports interoperability learning courses for civil servants through the Commission’s Interoperability Academy (02/07/2020)

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.

Work in progress towards ESCO v1.1 (06/07/2020)

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.