Skills and occupational needs: labour market forecasting systems in Italy

The development of forecasting systems for occupational needs represents, for different actors, such as enterprises, employers’ associations, trade unions, an opportunity to receive information and to anticipate labour market trends. Also, this information could be used to develop an effective vocational and educational training system aimed to guarantee more employability, to address labour policies and manage industrial relations. Starting from this theoretical framework, the paper aims to give an overview of the initiatives carried out in Italy to collect information on skill projections and the needs of the labour market through a deepening of the main surveys and initiatives for occupational needs analysis and labour market forecasting adopted in the Italian context from the 1980s until today.
Also, because of the lack of reviews of labour market forecasting methodologies, the goal of this working paper will be to offer an illustration of the approaches and research techniques that have been adopted in the Italian context on the side of labour supply (The Italian Occupational Information System promoted by ISFOL and ISTAT and connected to the other public institutions) and on the side of labour demand (Excelsior survey conducted by the Italian Union of the Chambers of Commerce - Unioncamere).
All the information is now available at the website http://professionioccupazione.isfol.it ‘Occupations, employment and labour market needs’ [Professioni, occupazione, fabbisogni]1 which hosts data on labour market information and surveys carried out by various institutes. The paper also focuses on the techniques used to measure occupations and on the classifi cations and nomenclatures provided to classify work activties in Italy.