ESCO can be used by developers as a building block for different types of applications that provide services such as auto complete, suggestion systems, job search algorithms and job matching algorithms.
The ESCO classification is published in SKOS-RDF and CSV formats, in order to enable users to integrate it into their applications and services.
ESCO is published as Linked Open Data (LOD) so it can be easily reused and linked to other data sources.
Using the Linked Open Data method helps users to:
- easily integrate data into their existing IT systems;
- link to other data;
- ensure that the data is well managed and quality-assured before publication;
- ensure that continuously updating the data doesn’t lead to high administrative costs.
ESCO is developed and published using a data model that complies with the following principles:
- A clear scope: each occupation, knowledge, skill and competence in ESCO is clearly established and defined in its description and/or scope note.
- Unique concept identifiers: each occupation, knowledge, skill and competence in ESCO is identified by a string of characters that follows a specific syntax: the URI.
- Backward compatibility: URIs remain consistent over a prolonged period.
The ESCO classification is composed of modules that contain elements such as occupations, knowledge, skills and competences, qualifications, and the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) hierarchy. When combined and interrelated, these modules make up the whole classification.
There are three main types of module:
- Core modules hold the actual ESCO concepts (occupations, skills, etc.) along with their Unique Resource Identifiers (URIs).
- Linking modules provide links between two or more modules, at least one of which is a core module. An example is the relationship between occupations and skills.
- Supporting modules enrich the core modules with supporting classification schemes such as ISCO-08.
ESCO contains language packs, which are published separately, and each module is available in 28 (all official EU languages plus Icelandic, Norwegian, Ukrainian, and Arabic). The full list of languages covered by ESCO is:
- Bulgarian (bg)
- Spanish (es)
- Czech (cs)
- Danish (da)
- German (de)
- Estonian (et)
- Greek (el)
- English (en)
- French (fr)
- Irish (ga)
- Croatian (hr)
- Italian (it)
- Latvian (lv)
- Lithuanian (lt)
- Hungarian (hu)
- Maltese (mt)
- Dutch (nl)
- Polish (pl)
- Portuguese (pt)
- Romanian (ro)
- Slovak (sk)
- Slovenian (sl)
- Finnish (fi)
- Swedish (sv)
- Icelandic (is)
- Norwegian (no)
- Arabic (ar)
- Ukrainian (uk)
The classification can be accessed either through the APIs or by downloading it.
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