The aim of the OECD Skills for Jobs database is to facilitate better adaptation to changing skill needs by making available a database of skill imbalances indicators that is comparable across countries and regularly updated. The Skill Needs Indicators provide an overview of the shortages and surpluses of skills across countries.

ELSSkills1@oecd.org

The indicator was calculated by the OECD using data from the European Union Labour Force Survey (LFS: EU), the Permanent Household Survey (EPH: ARG), the Australian Labour Force Survey (AUS), the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (HILDA: AUS), Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD: BRA), the Canadian Labour Force Survey (CAN) the Socio-Economic Characterization Survey (CASEN: CHL), the National Survey of Occupation and Employment (ENOE: MEX), the New Zealand Labour Force Survey (NZL), the New Zealand Income Survey (NZL), Encuesta Nacional de Hogares (ENAHO: PER), the Turkish Labour Force Survey (TUR), the Current Population Survey (CPS: USA), the South African Labour Force Survey. For the OECD Skills for Jobs database 2022, the skill-occupation mapping is created using information retrieved from online job postings for the years 2012-2019, for the combined set of postings in six countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States), as obtained from Emsi Burning Glass data.

Sep-22

The data refer to 2019, with the following exceptions: they refer to 2018 for CHE, FRA, IRL, ITA, POL, THA; 2017 for DEU, GBR, KOR; 2016 for AUS; 2015 for BRA, TUR; and 2012 for ISL, SVN.

Positive values indicate skill shortage while negative values point to skill surplus. The larger the absolute value, the larger the imbalance. The value of 1 represents the largest shortage and the value of -1 the largest surplus across OECD countries, skill categories and years.