What is ESCO and how to use it?

ESCO (European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations) is the European multilingual classification of Skills, Competences and Occupations.  

ESCO works as a dictionary, describing, identifying and classifying professional occupations and skills relevant for the EU labour market and education and training.  Those concepts and the relationships between them can be understood by electronic systems, which allows different online platforms to use ESCO for services like matching jobseekers to jobs on the basis of their skills, suggesting trainings to people who want to reskill or upskill etc.

ESCO provides descriptions of 3,039 occupations and 13,939 skills linked to these occupations, translated into 28 languages (all official EU languages plus Icelandic, Norwegian, Ukrainian, and Arabic).

The aim of ESCO is to support job mobility across Europe and therefore a more integrated and efficient labour market, by offering a “common language” on occupations and skills that can be used by different stakeholders on employment and education and training topics.

ESCO is a European Commission project, run by Directorate General Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL). It is available in an online portal and can be consulted free of charge. Its first full version (ESCO v1) was published on the 28th of July 2017. The latest version of the classification can be downloaded or retrieved through the ESCO API.