Luxembourg: sectoral studies on skills anticipation

The seven sectoral studies aim to improve understanding, anticipation and management of the skills gaps caused by a constantly changing labour market influenced by technological, environmental and societal changes.

Content

All studies begin with a presentation of the sector, accompanied by key figures on the companies and the posts declared. Experts then qualitatively analyse the sector’s development prospects. Finally, the trade/profession-development and skill-development trends are presented. The seven sectoral studies focus on different professional areas:

• construction;
• transport and logistics;
• craft;
• finance;
• hospitality;
• restaurant and catering;
• commerce and industry.

The analyses are based on the details of the vacancies declared to the Public Employment Service (ADEM) and on the indicators it uses to match vacancies and jobseekers. Although the posts declared to the ADEM do not represent all job opportunities in Luxembourg, the sectoral studies are a first conclusive attempt at an analysis to create more transparency in relation to the job market. The ADEM worked together with the employers’ associations representing each sector in order to validate the results.

Target groups and objectives

The sectoral anticipation studies target both employers, who will find a benchmark of the situation and trends in their sector, and employees/jobseekers, enabling them to adapt their skills to the labour market better. More concretely, the studies are expected to offer:

• introduction of new measures to deal with skills gaps;
• definition and implementation of targeted training/upskilling/reskilling actions;
• guidance of career choices;
• contribution to the ongoing development of the national skills strategy.

Main findings

The main findings of the sectoral studies include the following:

• trades and professions experiencing growth are very diverse and are logically linked to the growth of certain activities at national level;
• trades and professions recording the greatest labour shortage are often highly skilled, such as computer engineers or legal experts, along with craft sector trades, such as butchers or electricians;
• trades and professions recording a surplus of candidates are those requiring fewer qualifications, such as in administration, cleaning and sales;
• the trend of digitalisation is increasing the demand for related professions or projects, while automation is expected to reduce the demand in certain professions, such as administrative work at back-office level or manual assembly in industry;
• there is an increasing demand for ever higher transversal skills, such as inter-personal, digital, management skills and languages. The most sought-after skill overall is the ability to adapt to change.

Collaboration with social partners on the subject of skills and lifelong learning is considered important for further development of these analyses.

Read more

• ADEM (2022). Sectoral studies.
• ADEM (2022).  Publication of seven sectoral studies: ADEM analyses job offers for a better knowledge of growing professions and future skills.