NESTA: Linking skills to occupations: Using big data to build a new occupational taxonomy for the UK

Nesta says that "the skills we need for work are changing" and don't we know it...
"From automation to climate change and from globalisation to our ageing population, there are a myriad of factors changing the nature of work in the UK. These factors mean the majority of workers are in occupations with highly uncertain futures (Bakhshi, Downing, Osborne and Schneider, 2017).
Amidst this changing landscape, policymakers, educators, businesses and individuals need timely information on how occupations are changing and how they can help workers to transition out of at-risk occupations where skills are becoming redundant. To generate these insights we need a framework that links skills to occupations."

Jyldyz Djumaliev, Antonio Lima and Cath Sleeman have been doing some interesting research to group occupations on the basis of skill requirements contained in 37 million UK job adverts. The resulting occupational classification captures both the skill specialisations and skill levels of occupations. Over the next six months, Nesta will be working to show how this work, which links occupations to skills, can be applied to learn more about skill needs in the UK. 

Watch this space!