Brussels, 23 October 2026 – The SkiLMeeT roundtable discussion “Skills and Labour Shortages in Europe: Lessons and Policy Recommendations from the SkiLMeeT Project” drew 10 participants to the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) in Brussels on 22 October, with six taking part online. Project researchers joined policymakers and social partners to discuss the project’s findings and policy recommendations on skills and labour shortages in Europe.
Joost van Genabeek (TNO) presented SkiLMeeT’s research on skills gaps and mismatches, demonstrating that Europe’s skills challenge is less about producing more skills than about detecting changing tasks early and enabling adaptation. The project demonstrated that jobs change from within: 70–80% of shifts in task and skill content happen inside occupations, not through occupational replacement. Digitalisation is reshaping tasks, but the pressure for change is uneven, and is particularly strong for lower- and middle-skilled occupations. Shortages are multi-causal, with skills, labour supply, wages, working conditions and mobility all playing a role.
Professor Vassil Kirov (IPS) shared findings from qualitative research on three occupations facing severe shortages: nurses, software engineers and construction workers. Professor Kirov and his team carried out 22 qualitative occupational case studies, with 212 interviews across Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Poland. The occupations include nurses, software specialists, construction workers and teachers, and the central question is how skills transitions improve the match between workers and jobs, and what makes them sustainable.
The research found that successful transitions rarely depend on formal qualifications alone: workplace learning, mentoring and transferable skills are essential. While career transitions are possible, individual workers often bear the risk. Job quality has to be part of skills policy, but there is no single fix for shortages: sustainable “skills ecosystems” must cover the whole occupational pathway.
The presentation concluded with a series of policy pointers. Policymakers must institutionalise workplace learning through legal and financial backing for apprenticeships and mentoring, and link training policies to quality-of-work improvements. Transition risk must be shared through collective, state and employer funding, and training should target job-specific AI and green shifts.
Wouter Zwysen of the ETUI examined how labour shortages affect workers’ bargaining power and what that means for collective bargaining. While shortages have eased from their post-Covid peak, they remain significant across EU sectors. They are driven by structural factors (transitions, ageing) and cyclical ones, with big differences between countries. Wouter Zwysen pointed out that we must be careful not to confuse skills shortages, which call for training and upskilling, with labour shortages, which must be addressed through activation, migration and making jobs more attractive. Evidence from the EU and the OECD increasingly links shortages to poor job quality. A planned project with unions will study how social partners diagnose and bargain over shortages.
