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Welcome to the website of the expert conference on skills forecasts, organised by Cedefop.
Skills supply and demand forecasts: contributing to EU goals
An agenda for new skills and jobs, as one of the flagship initiatives of the new Europe 2020 strategy, aims at modernising labour markets and empowering people by developing their skills throughout the lifecycle. One of the key tasks for the future is to increase labour market participation and ensure better matching between demand and supply of skills
Since Cedefop’s Skillsnet first posed the question, in 2005, of whether it was possible to develop a system for regular European skill forecasts, considerable progress has been made, not least thanks to Cedefop’s own pan-European forecast of skills supply and demand. The initial two pilot projects focused on forecasting the labour market’s need for skills (Cedefop, 2008) and the skills supply (Cedefop, 2009). In spring 2010, Cedefop combined these two forecasts in the first pan-European forecast of skills supply and demand for 27 European Member States of the European Union, plus Norway and Switzerland. The forecast is disaggregated by 41 NACE sectors, 21 ISCO occupation groups and three broad ISCED levels.
But much remains to be done in terms of drawing upon the wealth of knowledge and experience collected on this topic at national level.
The conference: sharing the experience to improve Cedefop and national forecasts
The aim of this technical conference is to bring together an international forum of researchers and experts in labour market needs and supply forecasting, in order to gather the latest insights on how Cedefop’s forecast is used at national level, and what other (innovative) forecasting activities are taking place in the Member States This information will inspire improvements to Cedefop’s forecasting methodology. The conference will also discuss how skills supply and demand forecasting can be promoted as a method to identify future skill needs amongst different experts in the field.
The conference papers, discussions and exchanges are expected to:
- validate the quality and presentation of Cedefop forecast results and provide ideas on potential adjustments;
- give a flavour of the current use of Cedefop forecast results as well as more detailed analyses of future labour market trends based on forecasts;
- compare methods and tools used and check consistency in comparing forecast results;
- indicate how the forecast results can be used for further research and policy making; and
- provide inspiration and ideas for future developments of Cedefop forecast.
Cedefop Skills analysis team  |
