Local Labour Market Obseratory

Local Labour Market Observatories (LMO) are institutions that provide information about trends on labour market evolution by gathering and analysing data on the demand of qualifications and skills in a region or sector.

The main goal of LMOs is to help labour market agents make better choices and reduce the mismatch between skills demand and supply. Their main users are current and future labour market participants, such as job seekers and students, who need timely and relevant information to make educational, training, and occupational decisions; intermediaries who help these end users make informed choices, such as public employment service  workers and career guidance counsellors; policymakers, especially in the areas of labour and education; educational and training institutions, whose degrees should be based on the information available on labour markets; and investors and employers, whose investment decisions should also be conditioned on such data. Therefore, the key objective of LMOs is to guide individuals in making informed choices on skills development.

In summary, LMOs aggregate relevant existing data on skills and labour demand (from employers) and supply (from the working-age population), analyse these data and provide timely, relevant, and accessible labour market information to job seekers and students, public employment service workers and career guidance counsellors.