IER News & blogs

The Skills2Capabilities project has formally concluded, marking the end of a three-year Horizon Europe collaboration that explored how skills systems can better support labour-market transitions across Europe. The project, coordinated by 3s (Austria), brought together seven interlinked work packages to tackle some of the most pressing questions facing Europe’s labour markets: how to support workers to update their skills, navigate career transitions and stay resilient throughout life – and how to give employers access to a workforce ready for the demands of green and digital transitions.

The IER's Prof Chris Warhurst, Prof Gill Dix, Prof Philip Taylor, Dr Eli Dutton, Hilda Ragnarsdottir and Dr Laura Boothman were pleased to co-host a sandpit with Orthopaedic Research UK on 21 January. Prof Martin Underwood and Dr Fatema Dhaif from the Warwick Medical School also joined the event, alongside sector representatives and Government leads on health and work.

The event's focus was on 'Designing sustainable work to support and prevent musculoskeletal conditions across the working life course'. A key theme was the sustainability of jobs and careers. The group discussed opportunities both to prevent poor musculoskeletal health and accommodate the needs of those with health conditions to enable them to thrive in the workplace.

Cedefop, the European Agency responsible for Vocational Education and Training, have released the latest update to their Skills Forecast data providing labour market projections at a pan-European level from 2022 to 2035. The project was led by Cambridge Econometrics with a consortium of European research organisations, including the IER, and individual country experts from across Europe.

Find out more about individual country reports, the technical report and Cedefop’s Skills Forecast online tool.

For the past two years research staff at IER and the University of Sheffield, in collaboration with Omnifolio, have been working to create the first Standard Classification of Skills (SSC) for the UK on behalf of Skills England.

The prototype version of this classification was released on November 27, 2025, accompanied by a Skills Explorer tool, allowing users to browse the classification and explore links to occupations and qualifications, plus an interim report, detailing the methodology, information sources and examples of use cases. An overview of the tool and its beneficiaries is provided in the Skills England blog. Initial responses to the release of the prototype have been favourable.

A new article by IER’s Dr Sangwoo Lee and Dr Eva Hartmann (University of Cambridge) examines how institutional hierarchies within UK higher education are reproduced through transnational education (TNE).

The paper contributes to emerging critical perspectives on the internationalisation of higher education and highlights the need to consider how power, reputation and hierarchy shape the global circulation of UK qualifications.