Cedefop analysed recent Europass activity to glean information on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on national labour markets. Results show a correlation between the number of CVs generated online and the seriousness of the coronavirus crisis in each country.
Europass is a portfolio of five documents, designed to make skills and qualifications clearly and easily understood across Europe; the online CV is one of them.
The analysis included the EU Member States, the UK, candidate countries and EEA/EFTA countries. Findings showed an average 36.5% fall in the number of online CVs generated in March 2020 compared to one year earlier.
The lockdown measures implemented by governments in response to the pandemic seem to have had a direct impact on Europass CV generation, with numbers falling to unprecedented lows, especially in Portugal (-75%), Greece (-73%), Spain (-73%) and Italy (-72%).
There also seems to be a correlation between the fall in CVs created and the spread of the pandemic, i.e. the number of coronavirus cases announced in each country. Results show that countries which were more severely affected, such as Italy, France and Spain, recorded a sharper fall in the number of CVs generated online. This is indicative of the current state of the job market in these countries, showing that businesses have put their recruitment procedures on hold during the lockdown.
You can find the relevant data for each country, analysed in the interactive maps and graphs created by the Europass team, on Cedefop’s Statistics and graphs webpage.