- 2022Completed
Background
The Skills and Labour Market Research Unit (SLMRU) in SOLAS is a central data gathering, analytical and research resource to monitor the supply and demand of skills in Ireland's labour market. Its annual National Skills Bulletin summarised labour market trends and identifies skills shortages and difficult-to-fill vacancies. This informs education and training providers to make informed decisions on their programmes and school leavers and job-seekers to make their career decisions.
SOLAS is the Further Education and Training (FET) Authority in Ireland.
Objectives
Based on the online job advertisements analysis, the report was to capture the jobs and skills most in demand by employers and to identify career pathways, particularly for those whose employment has been impacted by COVID-19.
Description
The research report analyses the state of the Irish labour market through job advertisements, particularly looking at job displacements resulting from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, such as digitalisation. Using a skills adjacency model, the report highlights reskilling and upskilling opportunities to help displaced workers get back to employment. It focuses on possibility (skill overlap between occupations), feasibility (similar education requirements and stable or growing demand), and desirability (better salary). The report also examines trends in employer-offered benefits, such as remote work or willingness to train new employees, to measure labour market tightness.
Some of the findings suggest that some occupations, especially those that involved shut down during the pandemic places or those at risk of automation, suffered a large decrease in demand and have not recovered. Some sectors experience shifts in skill demands, with Manufacturing and production occupations becoming more technical while occupations in Finance more focused on soft skills.
The report was published in June 2022.
Bodies responsible
- Further Education and Training Authority (SOLAS)
- Skills and Labour Market Research Unit (SLMRU)
Target groups
Learners
- Learners in upper secondary, including apprentices
- Young people (15-29 years old)
- Adult learners
- Unemployed and jobseekers
- Persons in employment, including those at risk of unemployment
- Low-skilled/qualified persons
Entities providing VET
- VET providers (all kinds)
Thematic categories
Governance of VET and lifelong learning
This thematic category looks at existing legal frameworks providing for strategic, operational – including quality assurance – and financing arrangements for VET and lifelong learning (LLL). It examines how VET and LLL-related policies are placed in broad national socioeconomic contexts and coordinate with other strategies and policies, such as economic, social and employment, growth and innovation, recovery and resilience.
This thematic category covers partnerships and collaboration networks of VET stakeholders – especially the social partners – to shape and implement VET in a country, including looking at how their roles and responsibilities for VET at national, regional and local levels are shared and distributed, ensuring an appropriate degree of autonomy for VET providers to adapt their offer.
The thematic category also includes efforts to create national, regional and sectoral skills intelligence systems (skills anticipation and graduate tracking) and using skills intelligence for making decisions about VET and LLL on quality, inclusiveness and flexibility.
High-quality and timely skills intelligence is a powerful policy tool, helping improve economic competitiveness and fostering social progress and equality through the provision of targeted skills training to all citizens (Cedefop, 2020). Skills intelligence is the outcome of an expert-driven process of identifying, analysing, synthesising and presenting quantitative and/or qualitative skills and labour market information. Skills intelligence draws on data from multiple sources, such as graduate tracking systems, skills anticipation mechanisms, including at sectoral and regional levels. Actions related to establishing and developing such systems fall under this thematic sub-category.
Supporting lifelong learning culture and increasing participation
Lifelong learning refers to all learning (formal, non-formal or informal) taking place at all stages in life and resulting in an improvement or update in knowledge, skills, competences and attitudes or in participation in society from a personal, civic, cultural, social or employment-related perspective (Erasmus+, Glossary of terms, https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/programme-guide/part-d/glossary-common-terms). A systemic approach to CVET is crucial to ensure adaptability to evolving demands.
This broad thematic category looks at ways of creating opportunities and ensuring access to re-skilling and upskilling pathways, allowing individuals to progress smoothly in their learning throughout their lives with better permeability between general and vocational education and training, and better integration and compatibility between initial and continuing VET and with higher education. Individuals should be supported in acquiring and updating their skills and competences and navigating easily through education and training systems. Strategies and campaigns that promote VET and LLL as an attractive and high-quality pathway, providing quality lifelong guidance and tailored support to design learning and career paths, and various incentives (financial and non-financial) to attract and support participation in VET and LLL fall into this thematic category as well.
This thematic category also includes many initiatives on making VET inclusive and ensuring equal education and training opportunities for various groups of learners, regardless of their personal and economic background and place of residence – especially those at risk of disadvantage or exclusion, such as persons with disabilities, the low-skilled and low-qualified, minorities, migrants, refugees and others.
This thematic sub-category refers to providing the possibility for individuals who are already in the labour market/in employment to reskill and/or acquire higher levels of skills, and to ensuring targeted information resources on the benefits of CVET and lifelong learning. It also covers the availability of CVET programmes adaptable to labour market, sectoral or individual up- and reskilling needs. The sub-category includes working with respective stakeholders to develop digital learning solutions supporting access to CVET opportunities and awarding CVET credentials and certificates.
Subsystem
Further reading
Country
Type of development
Cedefop, & ReferNet. (2025). Report on the Post-COVID-19 Labour Market Trends: Ireland. In Cedefop, & ReferNet. (2025). Timeline of VET policies in Europe (2024 update) [Online tool].
https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/tools/timeline-vet-policies-europe/search/45206