Leiden, Netherlands, 8 December 2025 – SkiLMeeT researchers from TNO, Roy Peijen, Joost van Genabeek and Diane Confurius presented findings from the SkiLMeeT study Skill Mismatches and Worker Reallocation During the Green Energy Transition: Scenarios from Fossil Fuel-Intensive Regions in the Netherlands to the ESCO Support Team on 5 December 2025.
The researchers outlined how ESCO taxonomy and other similarity-based methodologies were used to measure skill distances between occupations. The study focuses on the IJmond steel region and explores potential worker transitions in the event of large-scale industrial closures during the green transition.
ESCO invited the briefing to better understand how ESCO is used in applied research. During the discussion, ESCO clarified that essential skills are defined and updated based on vacancy data and expert input, and that ESCO was originally designed for labour-market matching, while increasingly supporting research use cases. ESCO also highlighted upcoming sector clustering on the ESCO portal, and the planned publication of an ESCO–NACE mapping.
