After a year of work and collaboration, the European Commission has published a crosswalk between ESCO, the European multilingual classification of Skills, Qualifications, and Occupations, developed by DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion of the European Commission, and O*NET, the Occupational Information Network, developed by the U.S. Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration (US DOL).

The purpose of this crosswalk is to support interoperability between two labor market standards used by numerous public and private stakeholders that provide services like job matching, upskilling and reskilling and statistical analysis of the labour market. Researchers and policy makers will also be able to benefit from this bridge between ESCO and O*NET, particularly those involved in developing policies to improve the labor market or conducting research on issues related to workforce development and education and training.

Moreover, an official mapping that was jointly developed and approved by the owners of both classifications ensures a high level of quality and reliability, which would encourage its use by a variety of organisations, including those that lack the resources to create such a crosswalk or ensure the quality and reliability of the data.

In the past, creating crosswalks like this was labour intensive, since they demand a significant investment of time and resources, but modern technologies like machine learning and natural language processing greatly reduce the amount of effort needed to perform such tasks. To learn more about the methodology used for the crosswalk and access the results, visit the following links:

• ESCO Data Science team blog post on the transition between ESCO and O*NET
• Technical Report: The crosswalk between ESCO and O*NET 
• O*NET-ESCO Crosswalk Table

For any questions or support, please contact EMPL-ESCO-SECRETARIAT@ec.europa.eu.