In today’s dynamic labour market, understanding employers’ requirements is crucial for shaping responsive skills formation systems and plays a key role in helping people make well-informed career and training choices. Such information can also vitally contribute to strengthening employment services, facilitate the work of guidance counsellors to assess individual training needs, and support training providers in adapting curricula and training programmes. Policy-makers can benefit from up-to-date insights into current and emerging skill needs and new jobs being created, helping them shape forward-looking employment and skills policies.
The use of online platforms for advertising vacant posts and for job searching has significantly increased, and jobs of different types and levels are now widely published online. About ten years ago, Cedefop leveraged advancements in big data collection and analysis to start an activity to investigate this source of rich ‘real-time’ labour market information.
With the vital contribution of Eurostat’s Web intelligence hub (WIH), Cedefop releases an update of its Skills Online Vacancy Analysis Tool for Europe (Skills OVATE) every quarter. Skills OVATE supports skills intelligence by providing the information gathered across 27 EU Member States, EEA countries (Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Iceland) and the UK. The tool presents labour market data and trends in the four most recent quarters and is updated four times a year. The classification of European skills, competences, qualifications and occupations (ESCO) and advanced big data analysis methods are used to extract information on skills, occupations and sectors from the job ads.
Skills OVATE complements Cedefop’s toolkit of well-established sources of labour market intelligence, such as the Skills Intelligence, the European skills forecast, the Short-term anticipation of skills trends and VET demand, the European skills index, and the European skills and jobs survey. These sources are used by experts and policy-makers in the EU and Member States, and they help inform and shape education, training, employment, and related policies.