Cedefop’s European Skills Index (ESI) measures the performance of national skills systems using a composite indicator approach. ESI monitors countries’ performance over time and provides insights into possible improvement areas. ESI delivers evidence that supports the EU policy framework for VET and skills, in particular the European Pillar of Social Rights and the European Skills Agenda.
With ESI, Cedefop takes a comprehensive approach to characterising skills systems. National skills systems do not only develop the skills of the population but play a crucial role in activating skills in employment and effectively matching them to labour market and workplace needs. This idea is reflected in the three pillars of the index:
· Skills development represents the education and training activities of the country and the immediate outputs of that system in terms of the skills developed.
· Skills activation includes indicators of the transition from education to work, together with labour market activity rates for different groups of the population.
· Skills matching represents the degree of successful utilisation of skills and the extent to which skills are effectively matched in the labour market.
The European Skills Index uses the latest available data and is constructed based on the guidelines of Joint Research Centre (JRC) Handbook on constructing Composite Indicators. Methodological improvements and an independent methodological audit accompanying every release by the JRC ensures statistical coherence and robustness of the results.
The ESI webtool presents the 2022 release. It also shows scores for 2021 and 2020, however scores for these years have been back-casted using the 2022 methodology and may defer from scores displayed previous releases and those found in past Technical reports. The ESI webtool is available here.
The 2022 dataset can be downloaded here . The 2020 dataset can be downloaded here. The 2018 dataset can be downloaded here.
The 2022 technical report on Cedefop European Skills Index is available here . The 2022 JRC statistical audit report can be found here.
Past technical ESI reports: 2018, 2020
Past JRC statistical audits: 2018
Questions, suggestions or feedback? Please get in touch with:
skills-analysis@cedefop.europa.eu
Visit the European Skills Index data visualisation