The trend towards jobs upgrade will not materialise unless we invest in Europe’s people by giving them the skills they need, address skills shortages and mismatch and make our economies more green and digital.

Cedefop Executive Director Jürgen Siebel made this point loud and clear at two high-profile events, while also presenting the Agency's research work that anticipates the tendencies likely to drive the labour market in the next years – a valuable tool for policy-making, particularly given the focus on skills during the European Year of Skills.

Speaking at seminar organised in Brussels by the Swedish Trade Unions in cooperation with the Swedish EU Presidency and the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise on 16 February, Mr Siebel shared a sneak preview of Cedefop's skills forecast, which clearly shows that the labour market megatrend is towards the acceleration of upgrading: up to 2035, the broad outlook is more jobs and more skills-intensive jobs.

As for the skills that are likely to exhibit increased demand, Mr Siebel noted is not only AI, coding or programming – in fact, most digital skills needs are basic or medium level ones, and the positive sign is that, compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, 39% of EU adult workers more often use digital technologies to perform some of their job tasks and 36% do more online learning for job-related purposes, while some other headline findings illustrate the enormous impact of progressing digitalisation in the world of work.

Speaking at an Economist Impact event in Athens ('Europe: The new era for skills – Greece: The human dynamic in the new workplace and society') on 17 February, Cedefop's Executive Director focused on the problem of skills mismatch, saying that 52% of EU+ adult workers need to develop their digital skills further to do their main job better than at present.

He added that mismatch is not only about missing skills: 'There is also substantial overqualification: 28% of adult workers in the EU+ are overqualified – 32% in Greece, they hold a diploma higher than their job requires, and there is knowledge and skills underutilisation at work.

As Mr Siebel pointed out, the skills revolution challenges conventional thinking, in the sense that we should do more to complement supply side measures (training, guidance, support) with demand side measures that make the most out of the learning potential of work itself: 'In other words, connecting upskilling with job upgrading – what we have started calling "permaskilling" at Cedefop.'

He also referred to the support Cedefop has been offering its host country, Greece, in the past few years, in skills governance and apprenticeships, towards developing a labour market diagnosis mechanism and by bringing major stakeholders together.