On 8 May 2020, the Commission will release an improved version of the European classification of Skills/Competences, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO v1.0.5). This update is part of the process of the continuous improvement of ESCO and it aims at providing a taxonomy which responds to the needs of the labour market and the education and training systems. The improvements include corrections of errors in translations and spelling mistakes.

This new minor version also includes the important improvement of a skills hierarchy. The total of the 13.485 skills included in the ESCO taxonomy are placed in skill groups distributed across a three-level structure. The infographic below provides additional information on the ESCO skills hierarchy, and it can be downloaded in the Documents section.

From 8 May onward, the skill groups of the hierarchy will be available on the ESCO portal in the 27 ESCO languages (the 24 EU languages, plus Arabic, Icelandic and Norwegian). Users will be able to download the hierarchy in various formats, use the API for downloading the hierarchy free of charge and browse the hierarchy on the skills section of the portal.

Users will also be able to browse through and download the existing skills hierarchies that appear on the ESCO portal, that is to say: the digital competences, the transversal skills and the languages. The content of these hierarchies stays the same.

Other features of this new version of ESCO include:

• Improvements to the API functionality in order to provide the full set of parent and child concepts when requesting an ESCO concept;
• Updates of the privacy statements inserted in the ESCO portal. The new privacy statements are now included in the download and API sections;

If you are an ESCO implementer or would like to start using ESCO, share your questions and feedback in our online fora or via email at EMPL-ESCO-SECRETARIAT@ec.europa.eu.