IER News & blogs

Gianni Anelli’s research article 'But which skills? : Natural Language Processing tools and the identification of high-demand skills in online job advertisements' discusses the relevance of data from online job portals. Using two skills dictionaries, the ESCO dictionary and a national labour market dictionary, this study extracted required skills from Chilean online job advertisements.

The quality of paid work has become an essential component of individuals’ well-being in modern-day capitalism, and there has been a surge in policy discourse surrounding the objective of ‘more and better jobs’ (as articulated by the OECD) or ‘decent work’ (as outlined in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals) over the past two decades.

Remember all the talk during Covid about the ‘new normal’? It seems that this year really has seen the embedding of it, with hybrid working in many (but not most) workplaces. IER is one of those workplaces, where staff now typically work 2-3 days each week in the office. In the past I worked most days in the office when not in London. I confess to not missing the daily commute on those days when I now work at home. On the other hand, I feel that I’m losing out on the important daily informal interactions with my colleagues in IER.

In 2013-16, the European Commission, concerned by regional skills gaps, increasing graduate geographical mobility across national boundaries and incompatibilities in the administrative data resources and graduate tracking measures in member countries, launched the Eurograduate Feasibility study, to explore how sustainable monitoring of mobility among Europe's higher education graduates could be established.

In November, Director of IER, Chris Warhurst presented at a string of events on:

• ‘Mapping the Good Work policy terrain’ to the Department of Business & Trade;
• ‘Good Work and Productivity’ to a Productivity Institute event held at Warwick Business School as part of the Productivity Week; and
• ‘Industry 5.0’ at the Digital Manufacturing Conference held in Cambridge.