Skills mismatches

In the changing world of work, constant adaptation is a renewed requirement for governments, trade unions, businesses, individuals, education and training providers who must rely on the systematic anticipation of skill needs to establish strategic responses and prevent skills mismatch to ultimately benefit from the opportunities for social and economic transformations. The skills mismatch represents a discrepancy between the skills that are sought by employers and the skills that are possessed by individuals. Skilling, reskilling and upskilling throughout all stages of life is a precondition and an accelerator for smooth transitions into and within labour markets and is an important aspect of the human-centred approach to the future of work.

The ILO Exploration tool on Skills Mismatch is an extension of the approach taken by OECD to low-and-middle income countries (those covered by the OECD and the ILO are mutually exclusive) with some modifications described in the accompanying methodological note. Data is derived using labour market information from household surveys compiled by National Statistical Offices (NSOs) around the world. The microdata shared by NSOs is processed by the Data Production and Analysis Unit of the Department of Statistics and the ILO generates harmonized datasets according to international statistical standards, allowing for international-comparability.

Read more.