Cedefop's skills forecast to 2035: over 4% employment growth, and the unit that changes the answer

Cedefop’s 2026 Skills Forecast release carries a block of headline figures for the 2023-2035 projection period, and they do not share a unit. Of the five reproduced here, four are annual rates. The fifth is not, and it is the one most likely to be lifted out and quoted: “Overall employment in the EU-27 is projected to grow by over 4 % between 2023 and 2035.” That is twelve years of growth in total. Beside it, in the same block, sits “ICT professionals and technicians: 2.5 % projected annual employment growth across the EU-27”. Read the two as though they shared a basis and the picture inverts: the whole economy appears to outgrow the occupational group quoted next to it. ¹

What the 2026 release publishes

Cedefop announced the release on 21 July 2026. It covers, in the agency’s words, “quantitative projections of employment trends up to 2035 by country, sector and occupation across the EU-27, as well as Iceland, Norway, the Republic of North Macedonia, Switzerland and Türkiye.” That list is worth quoting rather than compressing to “EFTA and candidate countries”, which would overstate it in both directions. ¹

Two things are new in the 2026 release: Cedefop states that it introduces “dedicated analysis on replacement demand” and “a disaggregation of medium-level qualifications into vocational and general education pathways”. For an employer recruiting technicians and skilled trades, the second matters more, because it stops one medium-level band from concealing the difference between a vocational pathway and a general one. ¹

The forecast’s own description of its subject matter is narrow and worth reading literally. On Cedefop’s dataset page: “Cedefop Skill Supply and Demand Forecasts provide comprehensive information on the future labour market trends in Europe. The forecasts refer to employment by sector, occupation and qualification.” Wages are not on that list, and neither are vacancies. ²

The five figures quoted here, and what they compound to

Cedefop 2026 Skills Forecast headline figures, with our compounded equivalents over the twelve years 2023-2035

Published figure	Basis as published	Published rate	Compounded over 12 years
EU-27 employment, total	Cumulative, 2023-2035	over +4%	n/a (already cumulative)
ICT professionals and technicians, EU-27	Annual	+2.5%	about +34.5%
Coal	Annual	-10.7%	about -74%
Manufactured fuels	Annual	-4.4%	about -42%
Labour force aged 65 and over	Annual	over +7%	more than double

The national spread is wider than the European number

The EU-27 figure is the least useful number here for anyone recruiting in one country. ICT professionals and technicians are projected at 1.3% a year in Italy and Germany and 7.8% in Romania, against an EU-27 figure of 2.5%; the Romanian rate is exactly six times the Italian and German one. Compounded over twelve years on the assumptions above, that is roughly +17% against roughly +146% - the same occupational group and the same projection, separated by the difference between modest expansion and close to two and a half times the base. The ageing figures behave the same way: around 2% a year for the labour force aged 65 and over in Belgium, Estonia, Hungary and Latvia compounds to roughly +27%, while over 10% in Romania, Greece, Slovenia, France and Croatia compounds to more than three times the base. ¹

Projected annual growth ranges across Member States, 2023-2035, with our compounded equivalents

Series	Countries named	Annual rate	Compounded over 12 years
ICT professionals and technicians, low end	Italy, Germany	+1.3%	about +17%
ICT professionals and technicians, EU-27	EU-27 as published	+2.5%	about +34.5%
ICT professionals and technicians, high end	Romania	+7.8%	about +146%
Labour force 65+, low end	Belgium, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia	around +2%	about +27%
Labour force 65+, high end	Romania, Greece, Slovenia, France, Croatia	over +10%	more than triple

What the forecast is for, in Cedefop’s own words

Two further limits follow from what the material states. The forecast covers employment by sector, occupation and qualification, so it says nothing about what that employment will be paid. And it projects employment, not vacancies: a sector can shed employment while hiring heavily to replace leavers, which is the gap the 2026 release’s dedicated replacement-demand analysis speaks to. ^{2 1}

Which edition you are reading

What to do with it

The forecast supports three uses well and a fourth badly. It supports ranking: coal at 10.7% annual decline against manufactured fuels at 4.4% establishes which contracts roughly two and a half times faster. It supports country selection, because an occupational group projected at 1.3% a year in one market and 7.8% in another is unlikely to be competed for uniformly. It supports supply-side planning, since a labour force aged 65 and over projected to grow at over 7% a year describes who will be available rather than who will be hired, and bears on retention and phased retirement rather than on a requisition. It does not support a headcount: nothing in the published series is denominated in one employer’s jobs.

For occupation-level work, Cedefop’s Labour and Skills Shortage Index is the more directly usable instrument. It states that it is “Powered by the 2026 Cedefop Skills Forecast”, ranks each occupation’s shortage “from 1 to 4, with 1 indicating no shortage or surplus and 4 indicating an intense shortage”, and lets users “explore ISCO two-digit occupations grouped by skill level, filter data by country, or compare labour and skill shortages between two countries.” Its three pillars are demand, supply including replacement needs as workers retire or change careers, and imbalances between job qualifications and requirements. One practical warning: the country-by-occupation scores load inside the tool’s interface rather than on the page, so a score has to be read in the tool and recorded with its date. ³

The projection horizon ends at 2035, and the material read here carries no date for the edition after this one. Until Cedefop publishes one, the 2026 figures stand, and the twelve-year horizon shortens by a year every year without a single rate changing.

Figures in this piece reflect the sources as at the last editorial review on 2 September 2026.