Information on skills that employers demand from jobseekers can support citizens in making better career and training choices. In today’s dynamic labour market, understanding employers’ requirements is also crucial for employment services and guidance counsellors to assess individual training needs, and for training providers to adapt curricula and training programmes so that they provide the skills the labour market demands. Policy-makers can benefit from up-to-date insight into current and emerging skill needs and new jobs being created, helping them shape forward-looking employment and skills policies.
Over the last decade, the usage of online platforms for posting job vacancies has significantly increased, and jobs of different types and levels are now widely published online. The Internet has become a rich source of ‘real-time’ labour market information, which can be explored thanks to advances in big data collection and analysis.
After several years in development, Cedefop can now make available the full release of its Skills Online Vacancy Analysis Tool for Europe (Skills OVATE). This new type of labour market intelligence is based on information gathered from more than 100 million online job advertisements collected in 28 European countries. The tool presents labour market data and trends in last four available quarters and is updated four times a year. The classification of European skills, competences, qualification and occupations (ESCO) and complex big data analysis techniques were used to extract information on skills from the job advertisements.
Skills OVATE complements Cedefop’s toolkit of well-established sources of labour market intelligence, such as the Skills Intelligence, European skills forecast, the European skills index, and the European skills and jobs survey. These sources are used by policy-makers at EU and Member State level to inform education and training and employment policies. They help countries keep their education and training systems in sync with rapid changes in the world of work.
Most recent project developments
You can see the most recent project developments, here.