Cluj-Napoca, Romania — March 6th, 2024 — A European consortium of 10 organisations from Greece, Romania, Luxembourg, Germany, Spain, and Cyprus has launched SKILLAB: Monitoring The Demand And Supply Of Skills In The European Labour Market, a project funded by the European Union’s HORIZON Research and Innovations Actions (RIA).

As society is continuously adapting to technological change, the EU faces a severe skills shortage, with the labour market in many sectors and regions being unable to keep up. SKILLAB addresses the need for a centralised knowledge hub to combat the barriers to digitalization, with a focus on competency detection, skill shortage identification and forecasting, as well as workforce training and engagement.

SKILLAB partners include academic institutions, use case providers, and technology providers. The project involves designing and implementing an intelligent platform using data analysis, machine learning and competency mining to provide a knowledge base for recommendation tools to develop skill strategies for enterprises and individuals.

Cluj IT Cluster, a national representative organization, is the largest innovation ecosystem in Romania within the IT industry value chain. Since its very beginning, the cluster has been at the forefront of promoting collaborative cross-sector partnerships, with the aim of redefining value chains and creating a sustainable and resilient ecosystem. Cluj IT’s focus in the project will be on piloting the Skillab solution and creating the framework for incorporating feedback to improve and calibrate the functionalities of the platform.

“The European Labour Market is constantly changing, with digital skills at the forefront. The advent of Artificial Intelligence has turned the tables on which skills are in supply and demand, often creating gaps in the talented workforce and the needs of companies. SKILLAB is the solution to this problem, boasting a unified platform that monitors the demand for skills in Europe and offers effective strategies for upskilling and reskilling of European citizens”, says Lefteris Angelis, Professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Coordinator of the SKILLAB project. “At its core, SKILLAB strives to embrace the wind of change in the skills of the market and provide an efficient service that leverages cutting-edge technologies for cutting-edge recommendations on skills advancement.”

Andrei Kelemen, CEO of Cluj IT Cluster has the following to say about this new initiative: “The labour market has never been more fuzzy. We are navigating complicated waters, where predictability is almost wishful thinking. Hence the inflation of reports and studies on the evolution of the labour market. But such information, when available, speaks little to the typical employer (whether company or other organisation). And this is exactly the sweet spot where the solution we will be working on can bring value: the prospect of being able to understand the trends in your own industry or sector, tailored to the capabilities you are looking to improve or complete. We are thrilled to be part of this project consortium and I can only hope that we will be able to see very soon the fruits of our collaboration helping organisations from across Europe.”

To learn more about SKILLAB, follow us on social media @SkillabProject or visit skillab-project.eu.