Link4Skills

Link4Skills is a global research and innovation project on skill shortages. The acronym reflects the objectives of the call by linking for/4 fair skill matching.

It embeds 4 processes of responding to skill shortages: re/up skilling of established populations (incl. migrants and inactive women), raising wages, automation and migration. It considers 4 continents: Europe, Africa, Asia and America, where skill shortages and skill flows will be analysed.

It develops the AI-Assisted Skill Navigator for stakeholders from employment, vocational training organisations in origins and destinations.

Link4Skills will scrutinize: (a) how to identify the existing and emerging required skills in changing labour markets?; (b) how the EU should respond to skill shortages?; (c) how to recruit the required skills from various pools either from the existing workforce (including established migrant populations and inactive women) also supported by automation, and from the workforce from non-EU countries?

The project combines data on skill gaps and matching in the EU with analyses about human capital in origins; investigates emerging and established migration skill corridors between EU and India, Morocco, Ghana, Nigeria, Philippines, Indonesia, and Ukraine, in order to make enriched inventories of skill partnerships.

The project achieves its aims via econometric microsimulations based on EU databases, combining skill supply and demand, and by data collections and stakeholders’ expertise oversees.

The knowledge will be nested in the AI-Assisted Skill Navigator (TRL5) which is a Knowledge-Based Expert System, that goes beyond existing policy dashboards. It is an open access system available to public. It is co-created by labour market stakeholders in every partner country.

Partners will take care about stakeholders’ involvements in the project, by enhancing tailor-made communication and dissemination. The project will also produce Link4Skill Podcast Series and academic outlets.