In order to develop coherent policies with regard to education, skills and employment in an economy, we need to know: how many people will be employed in the coming years, and what are the jobs in which they will be working. This is where projections of the future annual employment growth are of key importance. This indicator provides an estimate of the expected annual percentage change in employment demand for each country: that is, how much the demand for jobs is expected to grow or shrink each year.

This indicator can be broken down to provide estimations of future changes in employment by sector of economic activity, occupational group and qualification level, both on a country-by-country basis and for the EU28 as a whole. In doing so, it provides an indication of how the skills demanded by employers are likely to change in the future. This, in turn, has implications for both: (a) the skills that future job seekers will need to acquire in order to meet the demand across occupations and sectors; and (b) the national education and training systems, which are mainly responsible for supplying the skills necessary to navigate the changing employment landscape.

Note: The detailed estimates are subject to possibly large and uncertain margins of error. They should not be taken literally but suggestive of indicative trends and patterns. As a rough rule of thumb, any cell containing fewer than 10,000 people should be regarded with caution. Cells with fewer than 1,000 people should be regarded with considerable scepticism.