RESET has four pillars: Skills Supply, Skills Demand, Skills Environment, and Skills Match. Each pillar represents a crucial dimension for understanding regional skills ecosystems and is further broken down into sub-pillars and specific indicators.
The four pillars are structured as follows:
- Skills Supply: captures the availability and the development of skills in a region. It has two sub-pillars: "Skills Formation", which encompasses indicators related to education and training systems and their capacity to produce skilled workers, and "Labour Attraction", which measures the extent to which regions attract and retain a qualified workforce. The rationale is to assess the production of skills via formal learning pathways and the capacity to draw talent into the region.
- Skills Demand: reflects skills requirements in the economy. Skills demand has two sub-pillars: first, "Employment and Productivity", which captures workforce participation and productivity levels. It captures the quantity of demand (how many jobs), how many people are being demanded to produce units of output (particularly in the high-skill area), and productivity. Second, "Employment Tasks", which examines the specific tasks required in European jobs. It includes the nature of demand, i.e. what is done in jobs. Jointly, these sub-pillars provide a comprehensive image of how skills are demanded and used in the regional skills ecosystems.
- Skills Environment: assesses contextual factors that influence skills ecosystems. It has three sub-pillars: the "Quality of the Education Environment", which evaluates institutional quality, inclusion and fairness; the "Quality of the Business Environment", which captures the level of development in economic activity; and "Education-Business Cooperation", which measures the strength of linkages between education and training providers and the business sector. Collectively, these sub-pillars describe the enabling environment for skills development and utilisation.
- Skills Match: highlights skill mismatches and barriers to effective skills utilisation. It features two sub-pillars: "Labour Market Imbalances", which examines mismatches between skills supply and demand, and "Activity and Transition", which focuses on activity rates and the transition of young people from education or training to the labour market. This pillar is crucial for identifying where regional skills ecosystems fall short in balancing skills availability and use.
Overall, RESET brings together 37 indicators across four skills pillars for 244 NUTS2 regions across all EU Member States. NUTS2 regions are often the basis for implementing regional EU policies and are particularly relevant for statistical analyses. These regions typically align with administrative units such as provinces or regions.