The level of qualifications and skills is rising across Europe, particularly among young people, and mostly among women. Still, inequalities in the level of education persist between member states. Also, the number of people with low qualifications is decreasing and there is a sturdy increase in medium (mostly vocational) and high qualifications. These are the main findings of Future skills supply in Europe: medium term forecast up to 2020 – a report released earlier this month by the European Centre for Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop).

Cedefop is the EU agency based in Thessaloniki, Greece, supporting European policy making in vocational education and training. The recently released skills supply forecast complements the 2008 Cedefop forecast on skills demand.

The next step by Cedefop is to bring together the findings of the two forecasts and to identify the mismatches between the skills supply and the skills demanded on the labour market. An update of the merged macroeconomic forecasts will be performed every other year, to enable policy makers to take these projections into account when formulating future policies.

Cedefop