Data sources

The Skills Needs Compass contains quantitative and qualitative information about skills needs, occupational fields, qualifications and labour market transitions. On this page, you will find descriptions of the data available in the Skills Needs Compass, with the sources detailed for each section of the service.
 

The All reports section includes all Power BI reports published in the Skills Needs Compass, along with labour market transition graphs and sectoral overviews.

Labour market transition graphs depict changes in individuals’ occupational fields, as well as transitions to and from employment, unemployment, study and economic inactivity over a five-year period. The data is sourced from Statistics Finland.

Sectoral overviews provide concise snapshots of the current state of sectors facing labour shortages and mismatches of the supply and demand of labour. The overviews encompass statistics on employees in each sector, including their educational backgrounds and labour market transitions, as well as information on skills needs and the alignment of jobseekers with available jobs. The data is sourced from the Skills Needs Compass, Job Market Finland, the Finnish National Agency for Education and the National Forum for Skills Anticipation (OEF).

Details about the contents of the Power BI reports can be found in the relevant sections below.
 

The Occupational fields section provides information on occupational fields, including descriptions of tasks, skills needs and key figures related to employees.

The occupational fields are categorised into three levels according to the classification of the National Forum for Skills Anticipation (OEF). For example:

• Level 1: 2 Engineering and science experts
• Level 2: 2.1 Manufacturing and mining managers and experts
• Level 3: 2.1.1 Manufacturing managers and experts

The key figures for each Level 3 occupational field include employee numbers by age group, sector, field of education, educational level and region. This data is complemented by a graph illustrating labour market transitions among employees.

In some cases, the figures are aggregated to Level 2 of the OEF classification, combining data from multiple Level 3 occupational fields. This has been done to comply with the publication principles of Statistics Finland.

The key figures and transition data are based on special compilations produced by Statistics Finland, such as:

• Employment by sector, occupation and education
• Employment by region
• Occupations of those retired or deceased one or two years prior
• Occupational transitions of the population over a five-year period.
   

The Skills section offers insights into the current and anticipated demand of skills in the Finnish job market, presented in Power BI reports. The section also contains articles analysing the skills data.

Updated once a year, the skills data is extracted from big data and processed with the help of artificial intelligence. The data comprises over 28,000 skills, which are classified by occupational field and organised into clusters of related skills.

The following data sources have been used:

• Job postings
• Investment data
• Scientific publications
• OpenAI’s large language model

Job postings comprise over 4.5 million postings published from 2018 to 2023 on job search platforms Job Market Finland and Duunitori.

Investment data comprises:

• EU investments and procurements from the public EU Open Data portal (50,000 investments)
• Investments in Finland and Sweden from national open data portals (Business Finland and the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems, 40,000 investments).

The data on investments is generally of a high abstract level but can depict future skills demand over a time frame of 1–3 years with considerable accuracy. The available investment data spans from 2008 to 2023.

Data from scientific publications has been sourced from:

• Open access publications available in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (approx. 20.000 journals and 10 million publications from 2010 to 2023)
• Articles in the Science & Research portal (nearly 800.000 articles with metadata).

OpenAI’s large language model enables the formation of skill clusters based on neighbourhoods of skills identified in large datasets. These clusters offer valuable insights into how skills are connected to each other, regardless of whether the source data consists of advertisements, news articles, scientific texts, or even statements and fiction (e.g. literature or Twitter).
 

Skill clustering

The service introduces a novel method of grouping skills into clusters based on their co-occurrence in the data. The context of a skill can vary across occupations, linking it to different sets of related skills.

Skill clusters enable a more accurate representation of an individual's skillset and labour market position than job titles while effectively describing the needs of working life.

The mining and clustering of skills data has been carried out by HeadAI.
 

Applicability

The skills have been classified into three categories based on their applicability. The applicability of skills has been calculated by the number of occupational fields they are linked to in the data.

• Occupational skills: relevant to a single occupational field
• Fairly occupational skills: relevant to 2–5 occupational fields
• Broadly applicable skills: relevant to more than 5 occupational fields.
   

The Qualifications section provides information on completed vocational and higher education qualifications, along with qualification forecasts extending to the end of the current year.

The VET qualification output and qualification forecast as well as the report on completed qualification units* are based on anonymised personal data from Koski national registry for study rights and completed studies managed by the Finnish National Agency for Education. The data on the reports is updated monthly.

*In Finland, vocational qualifications consist of units. Some units are compulsory and some optional, and all of them are assessed as independent entities. Instead of completing an entire qualification, individuals can also complete only one or any number of units that serve their needs.

The higher education qualification output and qualification forecast are based on data from VIRTA higher education achievement register owned by the Ministry of Education and Culture and maintained by CSC. The data on the reports is updated twice a year.

The report on graduates from education leading to a qualification combines data on completed qualifications from both vocational education and training and higher education. The data is sourced from the Koski and VIRTA registers.

Another set of reports describe skills that students acquire in education leading to a qualification.

The VET skills output report describes the skills acquired in vocational education and training, combined with data on the completion of qualification units. The skills data is sourced from national core curricula and qualification requirements for vocational qualifications available in the eRequirements service.

The report on skills output by qualification shows qualifications in which a specific skill is acquired. The data is derived from machine-readable curriculum and course description data published by universities and universities of applied sciences, as well as national core curricula and qualification requirements for vocational qualifications.

The report on skills output by educational field and level provides an overview of skills acquired in a specific educational field and level. The data comprises vocational and higher education qualifications, and the data sources are the same as those used for the report described above.