Sources and methods

Every figure on this site comes from a public source, processed by scripts that anyone can rerun. Where a figure covers a wider group of jobs than the page, a grey tag names the group.

How the short answers are worked out

• Will there be jobs? Jobs to fill between 2026 and 2035 (new jobs plus people leaving who need replacing), per 100 people in the work today, compared with all jobs in the same country. More than 1.2 times the all-jobs rate, or a shortage reported now by national employment services, counts as good prospects; 0.8 to 1.2 times as average; lower as limited. For the EU view, a shortage means at least 9 of the 27 countries report one. The forecast covers the job family (ISCO-08 sub-major group); shortages cover the narrower unit group.
• What does it pay? An estimate of average gross monthly pay for the job family, compared with all jobs in the same country: more than 40% above is "well above average", 20 to 40% above is "above average", within 20% either way is "about average", lower is "below average". The EU view uses the middle value of the countries' comparisons.
• What do I need to study? The ILO skill level of the job family: level 4 "usually a degree", 3 "usually post-secondary or a short degree", 2 "upper secondary or vocational", 1 "basic schooling".
• Will AI change it? The ILO's six exposure categories, in plain words: very low, low, some tasks, moderate, significant, high.

Sources

• Jobs, descriptions and skills: ESCO v1.2.1, European Commission. This service uses the ESCO classification of the European Commission.
• Job families and skill levels: ISCO-08, International Labour Organization.
• Jobs to fill by 2035, employment and qualifications: Cedefop Skills Forecast, 2026 edition (CC BY 4.0, doi:10.2906/087829408840877).
• Shortages and surpluses now: EURES report on labour shortages and surpluses, 2025 round, European Labour Authority.
• Job ads: Cedefop / ELA data on vacancies published on the EURES portal, July 2025 to June 2026. Shown only as a ranking within a country, because the portal covers each country's job market to a very different extent.
• Pay: our estimate, built on Eurostat's Structure of Earnings Survey 2022, the Eurostat salary calculator's occupation factors, and the labour cost index to bring it to 2025. The gender pay gap is Eurostat's, per broad occupation group (per hour, 2022).
• Study: fields of study linked to each job from the knowledge ESCO lists (ISCED-F 2013); graduates and vocational routes from Eurostat education statistics (2024); graduates working in a matching job from the Eurostat Labour Force Survey 2024 module.
• Where to study: European Tertiary Education Register (ETER, now part of EHESO), modified: we show students per institution, broad field and level for the latest year available. Official national course finders, compiled and checked by us (November 2026).
• AI exposure: Gmyrek, P., Berg, J., Kamiński, K., Konopczyński, F., Ładna, A., Nafradi, B., Rosłaniec, K., Troszyński, M. 2025. Generative AI and Jobs: A Refined Global Index of Occupational Exposure. ILO Working Paper 140. Geneva: International Labour Office. © ILO. https://doi.org/10.54394/HETP0387 Licence CC BY 4.0. This is an adaptation of a copyrighted work of the International Labour Organization (ILO). This adaptation has not been prepared, reviewed or endorsed by the ILO and should not be considered an official ILO adaptation. The ILO disclaims all responsibility for its content and accuracy. Responsibility rests solely with the author(s) of the adaptation.
• What the work is like (US data): This site includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. We have modified all or some of this information. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications. No EU source describes working conditions per job in this detail, so each page names the US job its figures come from.