Skills - Predicting, Understanding, and Locating Shortages in Europe

Project Information

SkillsPULSE

Grant agreement ID: 101132727

DOI

10.3030/101132727

EC signature date 13 May 2024

Start date 1 June 2024

End date 31 May 2027

Funded under

• Culture, creativity and inclusive society

Total cost

€ 2 666 250,00

EU contribution

€ 2 666 250,00

Coordinated by

FONDAZIONE GIACOMO BRODOLINI SRL SB
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SkillsPULSE (Skills - Predicting, Understanding, and Locating Shortages in Europe)

Reporting period: 2024-06-01 to 2025-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Skills shortages and skills gaps are persistent challenges across European labour markets, affecting productivity, competitiveness, and social cohesion. In the SkillsPULSE approach, skills shortages occur when employers struggle to recruit workers with the required qualifications or experience, while skills gaps arise when existing workers do not possess the skills needed to meet organisational demands. Contrary to the assumption that such mismatches will naturally resolve over time, evidence shows that they often persist and generate long-term negative effects for workers, firms, and economies; however, the existing evidence base appears to be limited because there is a lack of measurement consistency across the measurement approaches that do exist.

SkillsPULSE addresses these challenges by improving the understanding, measurement, and anticipation of skills shortages and gaps across Europe. Its overall objective is to develop a comprehensive methodological framework that identifies where skills deficiencies arise, why they occur, and how they are likely to evolve, particularly in the context of digitalisation and structural economic change. By combining social science research, labour market analysis, and data-driven methods, SkillsPULSE aims to generate actionable intelligence that enables policymakers and stakeholders to design more effective education, training, and labour market policies at national and European levels.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project has carried out a range of scientific and technical activities aimed at improving the measurement and understanding of skills shortages, skills gaps and emerging skills in Europe. The work began with a systematic conceptual review of skills shortages and skills gaps and a review of national skills anticipation systems, establishing a conceptual framework to ensure that subsequent empirical work is grounded in consistent terminology.

Building on this, the project conducted extensive empirical analysis of labour market dynamics, with particular emphasis on the identification of emerging skills and occupations. Using large-scale online job vacancy (OJV) data and harmonised skill taxonomies (e.g. ESCO), the project developed replicable methods to detect newly appearing skills and rapidly growing skills across occupations, sectors and countries. These analyses were complemented by employment forecasts to provide a forward-looking dimension to emerging skill identification. The result is a systematic and scalable analytical framework for monitoring the evolution of skill demand across Europe.

Another achievement has been the development of indicators that capture the scale and distribution of skills mismatches across countries, sectors, and occupations. Methodological innovation focused on integrating traditional labour market information (notably ESJS2 survey microdata) with big data from online vacancies (Lightcast), thereby combining depth and structural information with timeliness and granularity. On this basis, the project has progressed towards a new approach designed to support systematic monitoring and cross-country comparison of potential skill shortages and gaps across Europe. The approach allows structured benchmarking across occupational groups and Member States.

The project developed computational methods to assess the responsiveness of education and training systems to emerging skill demand. Through web extraction and text analysis of programme and course descriptions, it constructed quantitative measures of the extent to which new and emerging skills are reflected in formal training provision.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

SkillsPULSE goes beyond the current state of the art by moving from fragmented and often static assessments of skills shortages and gaps towards a dynamic, integrated, and forward-looking approach. A key limitation in the existing literature and policy practice has been the absence of a consistent conceptual distinction between skill shortages, skill gaps, and related forms of mismatch. Our research established a clear and operational set of definitions grounded in a comprehensive review of measurement approaches and international practices, while also mapping national skills anticipation systems and identifying methodological weaknesses in prevailing indicators.

Building on this, we developed a novel methodology for identifying potential skill shortages by explicitly linking demand-side indicators (OJV) with supply-side information derived from the European Skills and Jobs Survey (ESJS). This approach overcomes a major shortcoming of both subjective employer-reported measures and purely vacancy-based indicators, which typically fail to account for the distribution of skills in the workforce. By benchmarking vacancy-based measures against employee-level data, the project introduces a more robust and policy-relevant proxy for shortage intensity at occupational and country levels.

Future work on the skills shortage index and associated indicators will provide new ways to identify emerging skills needs and anticipate future mismatches, supporting more timely and targeted interventions. By embedding these tools into a software environment, the project will facilitate wider uptake by policy institutions and labour market analysts, further enhancing the potential for policy impact of the index.

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