Cedefop’s European Skills Index (ESI) measures the performance of national skills systems using a composite indicator approach. ESI monitors countries’ performance over time and provides insights into possible improvement areas. ESI delivers evidence that supports the EU policy framework for VET and skills, in particular the European Pillar of Social Rights and the European  Skills Agenda.

With ESI, Cedefop takes a comprehensive approach to characterising skills systems. National skills systems do not only develop the skills of the population but play a crucial role in activating skills in employment and effectively matching them to labour market and workplace needs. This idea is reflected in the three pillars of the index:

·         Skills development represents the education and training activities of the country and the immediate outputs of that system in terms of the skills developed.

·         Skills activation includes indicators of the transition from education to work, together with labour market activity rates for different groups of the population.

·         Skills matching represents the degree of successful utilisation of skills and the extent to which skills are effectively matched in the labour market.

The European Skills Index uses the latest available data and is constructed based on the guidelines of Joint Research Centre (JRC) Handbook on constructing Composite Indicators. Methodological improvements and an independent methodological audit accompanying every release by the JRC ensures statistical coherence and robustness of the results.

The ESI webtool presents the 2024 release. It also shows scores for all years since 2017, however scores for these years have been back-casted using the 2024 methodology and may defer from scores displayed previous releases and those found in past Technical reports. The ESI webtool is available here.

The 2024 dataset can be downloaded here

The 2024 technical report is available here

The 2024 JRC statistical audit report can be found here

Past datasets: 2018, 2020, 2022 

Past technical ESI reports: 2018, 2020, 2022 

Past JRC statistical audits: 2018, 2022

Questions, suggestions or feedback? Please get in touch with:

esi@cedefop.europa.eu