The demand and supply of skills across regions of the UK: evidence from new data sources

This project first looks at UK in an international context by estimating demand and supply impacts on the relative graduate wage. It will then investigate regional variation in the demands for skills by firms and supply of skills by workers, based on using new web-based sources of data. The demand side will be measured using data from job vacancy platforms and the work will draw from ongoing analyses by OECD, NESTA and others to yield a comprehensive picture of:

• Skills most frequently demanded by firms by region and sector. This will consider both individual skills and bundles of skills. It will examine links between skills and qualifications and age.
• Skills related to AI and the digital transformation. Where are they located and has this changed over time?

While there is significant work ongoing using this job platform data, there is far less knowledge on the supply side trends. The supply of skills in any region will depend on both the levels of skills in the resident working population but also migration to and from the regions, both from other parts of the UK and abroad. We will build on an ESCoE-funded project which attempts to measure the mobility of workers across regions and link it to skill levels based on qualifications from the demand side. The research will also build on the Human Capital theme scoping paper.

Lead Researcher Mary O’Mahony (King’s College London)

Collaborators Augustin De Coulon (KCL), Michaela Vecchi (Kingston), Elodie Andrieu (KCL), Oleksii Romanko (KCL), Malgorzata Kuczera (OECD), Larissa Marioni (NIESR), Catherine Robinson (Kent)