This page provides details on ESCO Download packages, their internal structure, and guidance on creating connections and relations between various ESCO files. This information is designed to assist ESCO stakeholders and users in seamlessly integrating ESCO data into their systems or applications. Understanding and establishing connections between files enhance the interoperability of ESCO, enabling users to achieve a more nuanced and customised use of the classification system.
Downloading ESCO
After downloading the ESCO Dataset in your preferred language (in csv or ods), you will discover 16 files listed in alphabetical order
- broaderRelationsOccPillar
- broaderRelationsSkillPillar
- digCompSkillsCollection
- digitalSkillsCollection
- greenSkillsCollection
- ISCOGroups
- languageSkillsCollection
- occupations
- occupationSkillRelations
- researchOccupationsCollection
- researchSkillsCollection
- skillGroups
- skills
- skillsHierarchy
- skillSkillRelations
- transversalSkillsCollection
Below, you can explore more information on these files, categorized into four main groups:
The ESCO occupations pillar is built on ISCO-08 which serves as the hierarchical structure for the occupations pillar. ISCO-08 provides the top four levels for the occupations pillar and ESCO occupations are located at level five and lower. In ESCO, each occupation is mapped to exactly one ISCO-08 code. Therefore, you will find following two files related to the occupations pillar: ISCOGroups (the top four levels) and occupations(all ESCO occupations starting from level five).
The skills pillar provides a comprehensive list of knowledge, skills and competences relevant to the European labour market. It is structured in a hierarchy which contains four sub-classifications: Knowledge, Language skills and knowledge, Skills and Transversal skills. The ESCO skills pillar is a mono-hierarchy, where each knowledge/skill concept in ESCO is allocated to one knowledge/skill group. For skills sub-classifications skills groups provide top 3 levels and from ESCO skills are located at level four and lower.
Therefore, you will find following files related to the skills pillar: languageSkillsCollection, skillGroups, skills, skillsHierarchy
Upon downloading the files in your preferred language, you will also gain access to files containing relationships between ESCO concepts. The relevant files are named as follows: broaderRelationsOccPillar; broaderRelationsSkillPillar; occupationSkillRelations; skillSkillRelations. These files allow you to create relations between different aspects and data in ESCO.
However, note that if you are looking for a file that includes all the relationships between occupations and skills in text, you will have to craft it yourself. In fact, as the relations between concepts are language independent, the files above show the relationships using uniquely the URIs. In order to create your own relations file in the language you desire, follow the instructions:
- Download the ESCO classification in the language you prefer together with language independent files
- Open both files you need to connect in Excel
- Exploiting the URIs, use the VLOOKUP function in Excel to copy the preferred terms of the ESCO classification into the relations file.
Keep in mind that the key for merging the datasets in ESCO are the concepts' URIs and this is just one of the possibilities on how to create these relations. The structure of ESCO data and its files have been intentionally designed to accommodate a wide range of stakeholders and their specific use cases.
For example, to construct the skills hierarchy in Spanish language, you would need to link the individual skills (skills_es.csv) with the skills hierarchy (skillsHierarchy_es.csv) in Spanish. Additionally, you would require a third file detailing the relations between individual skills and parent concepts (broaderRelationsSkillPillar_es). By merging these three files, you can obtain the complete ESCO hierarchy, encompassing information on both groups and individual skills.
ESCO Classification has specific labeling for different topical groups:
- DigComp Framework: file namedigCompSkillsCollection
European Commission published the European Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp) with the overall aim to contribute to the better understanding and development of digital competence in Europe. The digital competence framework consists of 21 competences divided in five competence areas. The Commission decided to integrate those 21 competences of DigComp accompanied by its five competence areas in the skills pillar of ESCO. Therefore, the file you see is a mapping between DigComp and ESCO classification.
- Digital Skills and Competences: file namedigitalSkillsCollection
The DigComp definition of digital skills was adopted to distinguish all the digital ESCO concepts, including those skills that are more granular, or specific to only one or few occupations. Following that definition, this file contains a list of 1,201 ESCO skills and knowledge concepts labelled as digital. The methodology for this labelling has been developed by the Commission and it involved a combination of the independent work of human validators and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. You can find out more in the technical report.
- Green Skills labelling: file namegreenSkillsCollection
The European Union is committed to achieving climate neutrality by 2050 and is implementing policies outlined in the European Green Deal to transform the economy for sustainability. The European Skills Agenda, a five-year plan published in 2020, is the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion's response to the transformative changes in the European economic model. Action 6 of the Skills Agenda focuses on investing in skills for the green transition, including the development of a taxonomy of skills to monitor the greening of professions. ESCO has responded by labelling relevant skills and knowledge concepts as green to guide implementers in promoting sustainability. Find further insights into the labelling process and comprehensive details on the data in the technical report.
- Research Skills and Occupations labelling: researchOccupationsCollection & researchSkillsCollection
ResearchComp (the European Competence Framework for Researchers) is a tool that helps researchers assess and develop their own transversal skills, higher education institutions and training providers adapt their offer to researchers, employers to be aware of the wide set of competences of researchers. By supporting the development of researchers' transversal skills, it fosters inter-sectoral careers. The tool was developed by the European Commission in close consultation with relevant stakeholders.
ResearchComp is also the first competence framework aligned with the European Skills, Competences, and Occupations classification (ESCO), as it has been developed on the basis of the taxonomy of transversal skills for researchers that was included in the 2022 version of the classification.
Additional information:
Below find additional information and documentation that can be of use when understanding ESCO files and its structure in general.
For a better understanding of all ESCO classification you can consult as well ESCO Terminological guidelines.
The ESCO terminological guidelines aim at providing rules on the ESCO terminology to be applied by linguistic and terminological experts. The document will serve as common approach towards the understanding of concepts, the creation of preferred and non-preferred terms, and their formulation and spelling within the ESCO pillars: occupations, and skills/competences.
ESCOpedia provides a comprehensive array of information on ESCO, encompassing various facets such as its strategy, governance structure, classification versions, and more. Refer to this page for further details on ESCO.
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