ESCO v1.2

In May 2024 the Commission released the new major version of ESCO, based on a data-driven approach which combines human expertise and AI techniques for content creation and quality improvement. This includes leveraging AI to extract information on occupation and skills terms used in online job advertisements, courses and qualifications, national and international classifications of skills and occupations, sectoral publications and analyse them by using customized AI models to identify links with existing ESCO terms.

What has changed?

• 35 occupations, 42 new skills and 196 new knowledge concepts have been added to the classification;
• 677 alternative labels are added to new or previous ESCO concepts, together with  96 hidden terms; 
• 18 quality improvements tasks were performed. Over 12000 concepts have been updated. Improvements range from removing duplicate terms, correction of orphan skills, reallocation of skills and knowledges in the skills hierarchy;
• Improvements on existing translations in 8 languages and inclusion of national sign languages. 

ESCO v1.2 was officially presented in an online webinar on 21 May 2024.

Supporting documentation 

The occupations, skills and competences in the updated classification are available in the ESCO portal, in the Download Section, and via API.