Leiden, 3 July 2026 – SkiLMeeT researcher Federico Fabio Frattini (FEEM) presented new findings from the project at the World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economics, held in Carcavelos, Portugal.

Speaking during the Green Labour and Voluntary Standards session on 2 July 2026, Frattini presented research exploring whether green jobs provide sufficient financial incentives for workers to invest in the skills needed for the green transition.

The study, co-authored by Leanne Cass, Aurélien Saussay, Misato Sato, and Francesco Vona, analysed millions of online job vacancies across Europe between 2018 and 2023 to examine whether green jobs pay more than comparable roles and what drives any observed wage differences.

The researchers found that green jobs offer an average wage premium of 5.5% compared with similar vacancies in the same occupation. Approximately 2.8 percentage points of this premium are explained by differences between employers, suggesting that more productive firms or those with greater economic rents tend to offer higher wages for green roles. A further 0.9 percentage points reflect the greater skill complexity associated with green jobs, while 1.8 percentage points represent the additional wage return linked specifically to performing green tasks.

Overall, the findings suggest that while green jobs are associated with higher wages, only a small share of the premium is directly linked to green tasks themselves. This indicates that wage incentives alone may not be sufficient to encourage workers to acquire the skills needed for the green transition.

The research has been published in the Grantham Research Institute Working Paper series of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and can be accessed here. 

Leiden, 1 July 2026 – Piotr Lewandowski (IBS) presented SkiLMeeT research at the FORTIS project webinar on the impacts of automation on 30 June 2026.

Lewandowski showcased the paper “Automation and Educational Choice: Evidence from Norway”, co-authored with Karol Madoń and Vegard Skirbekk, which shows how industrial automation influences young people’s educational choices and the skills they acquire.

Using student-level data from Norway for 2006 – 2018, combined with regional data on robot adoption, the research investigates whether industrial automation discourages students from choosing vocational education pathways that lead to automation-prone occupations.

The preliminary findings show that students living in regions where exposure to industrial robots is rising more strongly are less likely to choose automation-prone vocational tracks. The effect is particularly strong among boys and among students whose fathers work in routine manual occupations. The study also finds that lower-achieving students are more likely to select these vocational pathways, pointing to patterns of negative selection that may contribute to widening inequalities in the future.

The webinar explored the implications of automation for labour markets, skills, education and public policy, providing an opportunity for SkiLMeeT research to contribute to discussions on the future of work and skills in Europe.

Leiden, 27 June 2026 – Piotr Lewandowski (IBS) took part in the expert meeting “AI and the Future of Industry: Readiness, Risks and Opportunities for Eastern Europe and Central Asia”, organised by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) on 25 June 2026, in Dubrovnik.

The meeting brought together leading experts to provide input for the next edition of the UNIDO Industrial Development Report, which will focus on the role of artificial intelligence in industrial development. During the meeting, Piotr Lewandowski presented the paper “Workers’ Exposure to AI in Europe and Central Asia”, which examines cross-country differences in workers’ exposure to artificial intelligence. The study utilises indicators created in the SkiLMeeT project.

The research shows that workers performing the same occupation often carry out different tasks depending on a country’s level of economic development, leading to substantial differences in AI exposure. The findings indicate that workers in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia are, on average, less exposed to AI than those in Western Europe. These differences are driven primarily by ICT intensity, occupational structure, and firm characteristics.

Participants included representatives from UNIDO, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), Eurostat, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), academia, and organisations working on AI development and implementation.

Leiden, 18 June 2026 – Research from the SkiLMeeT project has been published in the Grantham Research Institute Working Paper series of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), providing new evidence on the role of wage incentives in supporting the green transition.

The paper, “Returns to green tasks in Europe: evidence from online job vacancies”, by Leanne Cass, Federico Fabio Frattini, Aurélien Saussay, Misato Sato and Francesco Vona, analyses millions of online job vacancies across Europe between 2018 and 2023.

Their findings show that while green jobs appear to pay around 5.5% more on average, most of this gap is explained by the fact that these jobs are often offered by higher-paying firms and tend to require broader or more advanced skills. Once these factors are taken into account, the actual wage premium for performing green tasks is only about 2%.

The authors suggest that wage incentives alone are unlikely to encourage workers to move into green roles at the scale needed for the green transition. This points to the importance of continued investment in training, reskilling and broader workforce development policies across Europe.

Leiden, 16 June 2026 – Piotr Lewandowski (IBS) will present the SkiLMeeT research during “The Impacts of Automation” webinar, organised by the an EU-funded project FORTIS. The event will bring together researchers, policymakers, educators and other stakeholders to discuss how technological transformation is reshaping work, learning and regulation in Europe.

The presented SkiLMeeT paper “Automation and Educational Choice: Evidence from Norway” co-authored by Lewandowski and Karol Madoń (IBS) looks at how exposure to technological change may affect young people’s decisions about education and future career paths.

The event will also feature Laura Lázaro Cabrera (CDT), who will discuss the European policy landscape around artificial intelligence and automation, including recent developments linked to the AI Act.

The webinar will take place online on 30 June 2026, from 11:00 to 12:15 CET.

Register here.

Leiden, 26 May 2026 – Najada Feimi (LISER) showcased SkiLMeeT research at the Joint Research Seminar on Open Job Vacancies Analysis, organised by the SkillsPULSE project.

The online event on 26 May 2026 brought together more than 50 researchers to exchange ideas and address key methodological and data-related challenges shaping the future of job vacancy analysis.

Her presentation, “The Data Processing Pipeline for OJV – Methods and Challenges”, addressed how online job vacancy (OJV) data can be processed to generate reliable insights on skills demand and labour market dynamics.

Drawing on a dataset of more than 100 million job advertisements covering Luxembourg, Belgium, France, and Germany, the presentation highlighted the complexity of working with web-scraped labour market data. Rather than relying directly on existing variables, the SkiLMeeT team developed a comprehensive data processing pipeline to extract key information – including skills, occupations, locations, and firm characteristics—from raw job descriptions.

The process involves multiple stages, including data cleaning, deduplication, information extraction using machine learning models, and validation against manually labelled data. These steps are necessary to address common challenges such as inconsistent information, multilingual content, and differences in data quality across countries.

The presentation emphasised that building reliable indicators from OJV data requires iterative refinement and careful validation at each stage, particularly when aiming to support cross-country analysis and policy-relevant research.

The seminar brought together Horizon-funded projects, researchers, and representatives from EU institutions to discuss how web-based labour market intelligence can contribute to understanding skills needs and supporting evidence-based policy development across Europe.

Leiden, 22 May 2026 – Najada Feimi of LISER will present SkiLMeeT research, “The Data Processing Pipeline for OJV – Methods and Challenges”, during the online research seminar on Open Job Vacancy Analysis organised by the SkillsPULSE project on 26 May (10:00–12:30 CEST).

Najada will contribute to the session on methodological and data challenges in Open Job Vacancy (OJV) analysis and how results translate into skills policy.

The seminar brings together Horizon-funded projects working on skills gaps and shortages, alongside researchers and representatives from EU institutions, to discuss how online job data and web-based labour market intelligence can support skills policy development across Europe.

Register here

Leiden, 9 April 2026 – Project SkiLMeeT is accepting papers for its final conference, “Workers, Firms, and Skills in the Digital and Green Transition”, to be held on 22–23 October 2026 in Brussels.

The keynote lectures will be given by Ines Helm (JKU Linz) and Oskar Nordström Skans (Uppsala University).

The deadline for submitting papers or extended abstracts is 10 May 2026 (by midnight CET). We welcome contributions from researchers across all social science disciplines, particularly papers addressing:

• Effects of the digital and/or the green transition on workers, firms and skills
• Measurement and analysis of skill demand and supply
• Skill gaps and skill shortages arising through the digital and/or the green transition
• Labour-market policies to reduce skill gaps and shortages
• Education and training measures to mitigate skill gaps and shortages

Please use the ConfTool system at https://www.skilmeet.eu/conftool/ to register and submit abstracts or papers.

You can find the detailed Call for Papers here.

 

Leiden, Netherlands, 26 February 2026 – Digital transformation has reduced the share of routine work across advanced economies over the past decade, a new SkiLMeeT report shows. Most changes are occurring within existing jobs through shifts in the tasks workers perform, rather than through large movements of workers between occupations.

The report, “Skills and Tasks,” by SkiLMeeT researchers Piotr Lewandowski and Karol Madoń of the Institute for Structural Research (IBS), analyses worker-level data from two waves of the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) covering 2011–2023. Combining direct measures of adult skills with a task-based indicator of Routine Task Intensity (RTI), the study examines how job tasks and skill use have evolved across 16 high-income countries.

The analysis finds a broad decline in routine task intensity, reflecting a shift away from repetitive and codifiable activities toward tasks requiring greater judgement and problem-solving. However, the transition has not occurred uniformly, with countries and demographic groups experiencing the shift at different speeds.

The report also shows that women and younger workers continue to perform more routine-intensive tasks on average, although the gender gap has narrowed over time as tasks have gradually been redistributed within occupations.

The findings suggest that digital technologies are reshaping labour demand primarily by altering the task composition of existing jobs rather than eliminating occupations altogether.

“Overall, the findings imply that digital transformation will not eliminate routine work but will continue to reconfigure it. Policy responses should therefore prioritise strengthening foundational and transversal skills, supporting lifelong learning, and ensuring that workers can complement rather than be displaced by new technologies,” the report said.

Piotr Lewandowski and Karol Madoń (2025) Report skills and tasks, SkiLMeeT Deliverable D3.1

The report is available here

Leiden, Netherlands, 5 February 2026 – More than 30 researchers, policymakers, and industry representatives participated in a webinar organised by Vassil Kirov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) and Mina Kostova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) as part of the SkiLMeeT project. The event focused on the challenges posed by the green and digital transitions for skills demand.

The second stakeholder webinar that was also moderated by Vassil Kirov, “The Future of Skills in the Context of the Twin Transition – Academic and Practitioner Insights,”  took place on February 2, 2026, and opened with a presentation by SkiLMeeT researcher Ronald Bachmann (RWI), who drew on the project’s recent policy brief explaining why job-to-job transitions matter for Europe’s labour market. He showed that occupational mobility remains relatively low at a time when such transitions are needed most to help workers adapt to the green and digital shift. While job-to-job mobility can support reallocation of labour from declining to growing occupations, he warned that mobility also carries risks, especially for women, older employees, and low-skilled workers. Bachmann added that voluntary occupational changes tend to improve wage prospects, while involuntary occupational moves are far more often linked to wage declines. He argued that policy needs to expand training opportunities and make them genuinely useful for workers, while improving information on job tasks, qualification requirements, pay and working conditions, including strong implementation of the EU Pay Directive. See the presentation here. 

Monia El Faziki (SEA Europe) presented findings from the LeaderSHIP project on skills needs and gaps in the European shipbuilding and maritime technology ecosystem – one of Europe’s strategic industries, spanning hundreds of shipyards and a large supply chain. She outlined how the Shipbuilding Pact for Skills aims to attract, train, and retain talent, including ambitions to upskill and reskill 200,000 workers and attract 230,000 new talent, supported by €1bn in public-private investment. El Faziki highlighted three key forces reshaping skills demand: digitalisation, decarbonisation and an ageing workforce.  Alongside urgent shortages in core technical roles, the LeaderSHIP training plan identifies new skill needs driven by green and digital change and includes 35 pilot training courses. See the presentation here.

Both presentations sparked discussion on the demand for skills, training challenges, and employment prospects for young workers. 

 

The SkiLMeeT project will hold a webinar, “The Future of Skills in the Context of the Twin Transition – Academic and Practitioner Insights,” which brings together research and social partner perspectives on how skill supply and demand are changing in Europe during the digital and green transformations.

Date: Tuesday, 3 February 2026
Time: 14:00–15:30 CET
Platform: Zoom

Agenda highlights:
SkiLMeeT researcher Ronald Bachmann (RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research) will present the new SkiLMeeT policy brief, “The Role of Job-to-Job Transitions, Wages and Quality of Work in Structural Change,” on how occupational mobility can support labour-market adjustment and what policies can make such transitions easier and fairer.

Monia El Faziki (Director EU Social and Public Affairs at SEA Europe) will then share findings from the LeaderSHIP project on skills needs and gaps in the European maritime sector.

The session will conclude with a moderated discussion on skill demand from academic and social partner viewpoints, led by Prof. Vassil Kirov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences).

See the agenda here

Register here

Leiden, Netherlands, 21 January 2026 – A new SkiLMeeT paper, Occupational mobility, wages and worker well-being is out, exploring how workers move between jobs and occupations across European labour markets and what these transitions mean for people’s careers.

The study uses EU-SILC microdata for 18 European countries and focuses on the period 2011–2018. Rather than treating mobility as uniformly positive, the paper examines when and for whom changing jobs or occupations is associated with better outcomes – and when it may come with higher risks.

The results show that occupational mobility in Europe is substantial and varies strongly across countries. On average, around 6% of workers change jobs each year, while about 3% switch occupations. Occupational mobility also differs strongly across socioeconomic groups, with women, low-skilled workers, and older workers being much less mobile than men, medium-skilled workers, and younger workers, respectively. These differences in occupational mobility between socio-economic groups are mirrored by differences in wage mobility.

Ronald Bachmann, Laetitia Hauret, Ludivine Martin, and Thu Uyen Nguyen-Thi (2025). Occupational mobility, wages and worker well-being, SkiLMeeT Deliverable D5.1

Read the paper here.