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- Protective services workers: skills opportunities and challenges (2023 update)
Protective services workers: skills opportunities and challenges (2023 update)
Summary
Protective services workers primarily operate in the public administration and support sector, accounting for approximately 2 per cent of all employment in the EU. These workers protect individuals and property against various forms of hazards. They have been at the forefront of the recent COVID-19 crisis and will play a crucial role in managing future crises arising, among others, from climate change.
Protective services perform diverse roles in defending individuals and property against natural hazards such as fires, floods and earthquakes, as well as criminal activity. Their responsibilities also include maintaining law and order and enforcing laws and regulations. Jobs within this group include firefighters, police officers, prison guards, security guards, crossing guards, lifeguards, and traffic wardens.
Key facts
- Around 3.1 million people were employed as protective services workers in 2022, which accounts for less than 2 per cent of total EU employment.
- Between 2019 and 2020, during which the EU experienced economic lockdowns which prompted the engagement of protection workers in various cases, employment increased by 145 thousand jobs. Employment continued to increase ever since and by the end of 2022, it was more than 200 thousand workers above its 2019 level.
- More than half of protective services workers – 53 per cent in 2021 - are employed in the public administration and defense sector.
- Nearly two thirds of protective services workers (62 per cent) have attained a qualification level of ISCED 3 and 4 in 2021, equivalent to the education level achieved after completing upper secondary education. The qualification level of the occupation is not expected to change over the period to 2035.
- Protective services workers are mainly men. In 2021, only 16 per cent of protective services workers were women.
- The employment of protective services workers is projected to slightly decline by between 2022 and 2035.
- By 2035 about 3.2 million people are projected to be working as protective services workers. This underestimates the true level of employment demand. An estimated 1.8 million people will be needed to replace those who are expected to leave the occupation, which is mainly a result of retirement. Accounting for the projected loss of 196 thousand jobs, it is estimated that between 2022 and 2035 an estimated 1.6 million job openings will need to be filled.
- Technological change and digital innovation - including digital devices and new forms of online crime - will drive changes in the skills required of protective services workers in the future. Climate change adaptation, which regards the increased frequency of natural disasters and migrant waves, will also affect the demand for protective services and the skills required of protective workers.
Employment and job demand
The employment of protective workers was quite stable between 2013 and 2019, alternating years of small growths and small declines. However, strong employment growth in 2020 and 2021 signalled the importance of the occupation during the Covid-19 pandemic, although a small correction happened the year after.
Figure 1: Year-to-year employment change for protective services workers (2013-2022)
Source: European Labour Force Survey. Employed persons by detailed occupation (ISCO-08 two-digit level) [LFSA_EGAI2D__custom_7778289]. Own calculations.
The majority of protective services workers - 53 per cent in 2021 - are employed within the public administration and support sector (see Figure 2). The administrative and support service activities sector is the only other sector with a significant number of protective services workers, accounting for one third of their employment in 2021. The remaining of protective services worker employment is distributed across various sectors.
Figure 2: The top sectors employing protective services workers (in %)
Source: European Labour Force Survey. Microdata. Own calculations.
As regards the share of personal services workers within sectoral employment, these workers appear to be a significant part of the workforce in the public administration and defence and the administrative and support service activities sectors. In 2021, they were the second largest occupation within these sectors, accounting for 12 per cent of sectoral employment in both of them.
For more details on skills demand and job openings for this occupation, please access the Cedefop’s Skills OVATE tool.
Bulgaria, Romania, Spain, and Greece have the highest employment shares of protective services workers (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Protective services workers as a share of overall country employment (2021, in %)
Source: European Labour Force Survey. Microdata. Own calculations.
Note: Data for CY, EE, IS, LV and LU have lower reliability because of the small sample size. LFS data for MT are not available.
The workforce is comprised predominantly of men. In 2016, 14 per cent of protective services workers were women compared to 46 per cent in the economy as a whole. That did not change much in 2021.
Protective services workers are a rather aged occupation compared to the average across all occupations (Figure 4). In 2021, the share of workers aged 50 or more grew over one third. Protective services often involve a large degree of hazard and require extensive training before assuming employment. This is somewhat reflected in the share of workers aged 15 to 24 years, which is much lower compared to that across all occupations.
Figure 4: Protective services workforce by age (in %)
Source: European Labour Force Survey. Microdata. Own calculations.
The nature of most protective services (e.g., police officers, firefighters, and prison guards) involves permanent and full-time employment. There are however some jobs within this occupation that are seasonal in nature (e.g., lifeguards) or may involve mostly part-time contracts (such as security guards in events).
Figure 5: Contract and hiring trends for protective services workers (in %)
Source: European Labour Force Survey. Own calculations
Skill needs and future trends
The tasks of protective services workers such as police officers, firefighters, and security guards require frequent interactions with others, are more often exposed to hazardous situations. These workers are one of the least exposed to digital environments, and most of digital-related tasks are low-intensity ones. However, the high impact of their jobs on security and safety of people requires poses a significant challenge for their training and upskilling.
Figure 6: Skills, training needs, and job perception of protective services workers (in %)
Source: European Skills and Jobs Survey. Microdata. Own calculations. Unless stated otherwise, it is a share of people reporting that a task/skill is part of their job. *Always or often ** Share of workers reporting these needs to a great or moderate extent.
Cedefop’s Skills forecast provides a detailed view of the future demand for protective services workers. Overall, employment for protective services workers is expected to slightly decline over the period 2022 to 2035. This will account for most of the employment increase during the pandemic when employment increased by 7 per cent between 2019 and 2021.
Future employment change will however vary by country. Figure 7 compares the employment growth experienced over the relatively recent past to that projected to take place in the future. Employment in nine countries grew in the past decade and it is forecast to do so in the next decade as well. Belgium and Greece are among those with the highest past and expected future growths, while especially Czechia and Poland represent the opposite trend.
Figure 7: Past and expected future employment trend of protective services workers
Source: European Labour Force Survey. Microdata. Cedefop Skills Forecast.
Note: Data for CY, EE, IS, LV and LU have lower reliability because of the small sample size. LFS data for MT are not available.
New job creation or destruction is, however, not the main driver behind job demand. Most job openings are a result of people leaving them for other opportunities, or those leaving the labour market completely (retirements; parent leave and such). This replacement demand is frequently much greater than projected job creation or destruction. In the case of the protective services workers, it is estimated at about 1.8 million, thus being about ten times more than the projected job loss (Figure 8).
Overall, when future job destruction is added to replacement demand, an estimated 1.6 million job openings for protective services workers will need to be filled between 2022 and 2035.
Figure 8: Future job openings for protective services workers (000s)
Source: Future job openings indicator based on the Cedefop Skills Forecast. Own calculations.
More than 62 per cent of protective services workers held medium-level qualifications in 2021 (i.e. at ISCED levels 3 or 4). This is not projected to change much by 2035. However, the occupation is projected to undergo some qualification upgrading. The share of workers with low levels of qualification (ISCED level 2 or lower) is projected to fall from 15 per cent to 7 per cent, while the share of highly qualified workers (i.e. those qualified at ISCED level 5 and over) is projected to increase from 22 per cent to 32 per cent.
Looking forward
As much as the general workforce, the skillsets of protection workers are affected by megatrends, and mostly by technological innovation and climate change. Technology introduces new tools and operations to their daily work, while climate change and extreme events call for obtaining new skills exploiting technology to facilitate society’s adaptation and minimise impact. The pandemic has affected everyday work for protection workers, increasing the workload of frontline service providers such as those tasked with the maintenance of law and order.
- Technological developments in data management, surveillance, and other security tools have in the past decades significantly impacted the work of protective services workers. Biometric identification and matching, automated surveillance capacity, short-term situational predictions, AI-supported analysis of big datasets, and interoperability of large-scale data platforms for the exchange of information have been developed to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of law enforcement (Leese, 2022). Such new technologies automate several tasks performed by protective services workers and create new ones, in which technology complements human work. For example, the nature of traditional patrolling and has changed significantly over the past years as digital monitoring tools ease and enhance the job of policemen, firefighters, special force units and security guards.
- Technological advances will also create new skills as well as new job profiles for protective services workers. The increasing amount of data available makes knowledge of legislative principles related to data protection (e.g., GDPR) a necessary competence (Eneman et al, 2018). Coping with increased cybercrime will require more cybersecurity officers across sectors. Such workers combine advanced IT competences related to digital security tools with knowledge of related legislation and are already tasked with “cyber-patrolling” to keep cyber spaces (like websites and databases) safe from all kinds of malevolent actions. Newly emerging 5G technologies pose additional challenges in cybercrime detection in terms of, among others, end-to-end encryption, identification and localization of users, and authenticity of digital evidence (Guardia di Finanza, 2022)
- The increase in the volume and intensity of extreme weather events related to climate change affects the workload and creates new skill needs for first responders like firefighters and police officers. Heat waves, floods, wildfires, and other impacts on European societies expose the unpreparedness of warning systems and emergency services reaction plans (Mathiesen et al, 2021). Technology can aid protective services workers to better cope with extreme events. For instance, the EU-funded Fotokite project developed an autonomous drone for adverse weather conditions, which can inform firefighters on the situation from aerial view (European Commission, 2022), while the Horizon 2020 LINKS project is currently studying the use of social media and crowdsourcing in disaster response. To harvest the potential of such technologies, firefighters, policemen, and other first-respond workers must develop adequate technical training to perform tasks such as handling advanced monitoring systems and operate drones and other robotics.
- Apart from climate change adaptation, improvements can be made in the everyday tasks of protective services workers to further promote the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. Some jobs within this occupation involve heavy transportation, while others (such as firefighting) can be quite polluting.
- Protection workers had a core role in the responses to pandemic-related emergencies. This enhanced their workload but also brought new challenges such as new modes of civil disobedience (individuals refusing to wear protective wear, or groups of people meeting in public spaces to protest the lockdown conditions, etc.). These require tailored coping strategies to avoid social unrest.
- Another demographic factor to counter in the future developments of protection workers is the highly gendered nature of the occupation. Around 84 per cent of European protection workers are men. This sustains masculine stereotypes of these occupations, with little representation of and increased attention on marginalised groups in law enforcement. Rising employment of women in law enforcement could enhance the tasks of policing that require collaboration and communication - especially those with community focus, evidence-based practice, and a greater appreciation of the needs of the vulnerable (Brown & Silvestri, 2019).
- Coping with gender-based violence will increasingly affect law enforcement training in the future, as EU Member States need to adhere to the Istanbul Convention framework (EIGE, 2023). For instance, in Ireland, the national police service (An Garda Síochána), training on sexual and domestic violence is given to all recruit officers as part of initial training.
- Increased future migration flows owing to various developments (geopolitical, economic, climate change) are a major factor shaping skill needs for workers in this occupation. Coping with migration waves requires the involvement of various kinds of protective workers, from border patrolling officers to sea rescue forces and protective services workers occupied at refugee camps. Migrants are often of different nature (e.g., refugees, asylum-seekers, illegal economic migrants) and culture, while they have various socio-economic backgrounds too. To efficiently handle their duties, protective services workers may need to develop further their soft skills, such as intercultural communication, people & crowd management, language skills and cultural awareness, and knowledge of migration-related legal frameworks. Digital skills will also be increasingly needed in future migration enforcement. The EU Pact on Asylum and Migration (adopted in 2020) proposes changes to existing EU legislation to facilitate data collection to better locate and register undocumented people, as well as a pre-entry screening procedure for unauthorized entrants that will include, among others, registration in the Eurodac database.
Megatrends have left a mark and will continue to impact the future skillsets required by protection workers. Policemen, firefighters, surveillance officers, and other workers in this occupation need to complete mental and physical training, know the law, and have the necessary skills for its enforcement. Such skills will involve much more digital competences compared to the past. New protective jobs are emerging, owing to cloud and other digital developments.
Equipping protective services workers with new and updated skills will undoubtedly involve the participation of Vocational education and training (VET) providers. Most protective services (about 66 per cent in 2019 and 2020 according to Cedefop) hold a vocational qualification at ISCED levels 3 and 4.
As regards initial education, training for some protective workers such as police forces and firefighters usually takes place at nationally organized academies, while protective workers occupied in the private sector (e.g., security guards) obtain the required training and certifications through post-highschool vocational training. As in national academies, curricula in VET provision need to be updated to include courses and modules related to:
- various forms of digital competences
- response to and management of extreme events and crises
- legislation related to new developments (such as GDPR) or emerging challenges (such as refugee-related regulation and gendered-based violence)
- soft skills related to cultural and ethnic differences, coping with gender-based violence, and communication
For some completely new jobs such as those of cyber-security officers, new curriculum may need to be developed from scratch. Collaboration with IT-related VET providers may prove to be fruitful in this case.
The Commission promotes vocational training through various means, including the European Alliance for Apprenticeships and European Vocational Skills Week. Within the context of the 2022 European Vocational Skills Week, a 1-year firefighting training program was conducted in the Portugese city of Faro. Erasmus+ programmes support also the exchange of students undergoing protective services training (cf. the advertisement of Finland’s Police University College)
Continuous training is an effective means to promote upskilling and reskilling of current protective services workers to cope with emerging skill needs. Lifelong learning tools, such as certified micro-credentials can help workers, such as protective services workers, to meet specific professional development needs, ad hoc needs to close skills gaps and update skills (Cedefop). Such training is provided for some protective services worker jobs by the European Agency for Law Enforcement Training (CEPOL), and in particular its Law Enforcement Education Platform (LEEd). CEPOL is an EU agency dedicated to developing, implementing, and coordinating training for law enforcement officials. Its learning material includes dedicated training modules in various areas related to cybercrime, legal issues related to fundamental rights and data protection, law enforcement technologies, and public order and prevention.
Erasmus+ programmes constitute another example of good practice in providing innovative training programmes for protective services workers. For example, the Green Skills for Firefighters programme developed a complete 5-part module that is freely accessible online that provides training on reducing water and electricity consumption and waste in fire stations, CO2 emissions in the transportation of vehicles, and carrying out daily operations in the fire station in a more sustainable manner. Participants get a certification once they complete the module’s five parts.
How to cite this publication:
Cedefop (2023). Protective services workers: skills opportunities and challenges. Skills intelligence data insight.
Further reading
Beręsewicz, M. and Pater, R. (2021). Inferring job vacancies from online job advertisements, Luxembourg: Publications Office, 2021. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-statistical-working-papers/-/ks-tc-20-008
Brown, J., & Silvestri, M. (2019). A police service in transformation: implications for women police officers. Police Practice and Research, 21, 459-475. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15614263.2019.1611206
Cedefop (2023). Skills in transition: the way to 2035
DCAF, OSCE/ODIHR, & UN Women (2019). Policing and Gender. In: Gender and Security Toolkit. Geneva: DCAF, OSCE, ODIHR, UN Women. https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/e/9/442519.pdf
Edwards, A.-M., & Kotera, Y. (2021). Policing in a Pandemic: A Commentary on Officer Well-being During Covid-19. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 36, pp. 260-364
Eneman, M., Ljungberg, J., Rolsson, B., Stenmark, D. (2018). Encountering camera surveillance and accountability at work – case study of the Swedish police. UK Academy for Information Systems Conference Proceedings 2018:20.
European Commission (2020a). A New Pact on Migration and Asylum. COM(2020) 609 final
European Commission (2020b). Proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council introducing a screening of third country nationals at the external borders and amending Regulations (EC) No 767/2008, (EU) 2017/2226, (EU) 2018/1240 and (EU) 2019/817. COM(2020) 98 final.
European Commission. Help for firefighters with autonomous drones. 27 May 2022.
European Institute for Gender Equality. What is gender-based violence? Accessed 06 April 2023.
Guardia di Finanza (2022). 5G Technology: New challenges for Law Enforcement Agencies to face. European Law Enforcement Research Bulletin, 22, 157-171. https://www.cepol.europa.eu/publications/european-law-enforcement-research-bulletin-issue-22
Laufs, J., & Waseem, Z. (2020). Policing in pandemics: A systematic review and best practices for police response to COVID-19. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 51, 101812. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101812.
Leese, M. (2022). Digital Data and Algorithms in Law Enforcement: Some pointers for responsible implementation. European Law Enforcement Research Bulletin, 22, pp. 23-30. https://bulletin.cepol.europa.eu/index.php/bulletin/article/view/551
Noonan, E., & Rusu, A. 2022, ‘’The future of climate migration’’, European Parliamentary Research Service, published March 2022, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2022/729334/EPRS_ATA(2022)729334_EN.pdf
Data insights details
Table of contents
Page 1
SummaryPage 2
Employment and job demandPage 3
Skill needs and future trendsPage 4
Looking forwardPage 5
Further reading