European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
| Name | European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations |
| Also Known As | ESCO |
| Status | Endorsed |
The evaluation document is available in PDF format and in ODT format.
ESCO (European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations) is the European multilingual classification of Skills, Competences and Occupations.
ESCO works as a dictionary, describing, identifying and classifying professional occupations and skills relevant for the EU labour market and education and training. ESCO provides descriptions of 2942 occupations and 13,485 skills linked to these occupations, translated into 27 languages (all official EU languages plus Icelandic, Norwegian and Arabic).
The most recent version ESCO 1.1.0 was published 27/01/2022. ESCO is a European Commission project, run by Directorate General Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL).
ESCO is published as Linked Open Data (LOD) so it can be easily reused and linked to other data sources. Extensive information covering the development of ESCO, use cases and how it can be implemented are available via the website.
There is also an ESCO Web Services API.
Documentation:
Metadata:
The ESCO classification is published in SKOS-RDF and CSV formats, in order to enable users to integrate it into their applications and services.
SKOS is a W3C recommendation within the Semantic Web vision of the Web of linked data.
Crosswalks and limitations:
In ESCO, each occupation is mapped to exactly one ISCO-08 code. ISCO-08 can therefore be used as a hierarchical structure for the occupations pillar. ISCO-08 provides the top four levels for the occupations pillar. ESCO occupations are located at level 5 and lower.
The occupations pillar of ESCO is currently significantly more complex than SOC 2020 which contains 412 occupational groupings. The development of a crosswalk would be necessary to align the two taxonomies.
Whilst the purpose of ESCO is clear, it was not primarily developed for UK use. Some of the skills listed in ESCO are considered not distinct enough. This makes defining and comparing jobs and an individual’s transferable skills much harder. For UK use as a skills taxonomy we need it to be non-overlapping. Whilst this may be overcome in future this is a current weakness of the ESCO taxonomy.
Contact:
European Commission point of contact: Directorate General Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL). https://ec.europa.eu/esco/portal/escopedia/ESCO_governance
UK point of contact: Office for National Statistics occupation.information@ons.gov.uk