Anticipation of Skill Requirements: European Activities and Approaches¹

In contrast to the rather rigid manpower supply and demand projections in the 1960s and 1970s, the objectives and approaches of forecasting, in particular in the fields of education, training and skills, have changed considerably. This is due to the fact that industrialized societies nowadays are characterized by increasing openness, flexibility, complexity and, therefore, also uncertainty. The ‘mega trends’ impacting on education and training, e.g. globalization and internationalization of economies, job markets and even of education and training systems, demographic transition and the transformation towards an information and knowledge based society in the context of lifelong learning, can be taken as familiar ground which need hardly be discussed in detail in the context of this chapter. However, these trends affect the education and training systems of European countries to a different extent: these systems vary considerably across countries and so does the educational attainment of populations.