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Navigating the Labour Market
Find practical resources to bring labour market information into Career Guidance, from exploring employment and skills trends to interpreting evidence with learners, connecting education and work, and strengthening employer engagement and outreach.
Explore labour market data and skills trends
Start with trusted international sources of labour market data and analysis. Use them to explore employment trends, occupations, skills needs and wider changes in the world of work before translating the findings into guidance conversations.
Eurostat provides official European statistics on employment, unemployment, labour-force participation and related labour market indicators.
Useful for: checking European and country-level trends and helping learners place local labour market information in a wider context.
The OECD employment hub brings together comparative analysis on employment, skills, job quality and changes affecting labour markets across countries.
Useful for: examining broader employment and skills trends and discussing how structural change can affect career opportunities.
ILOSTAT is the ILO’s global labour statistics database, providing internationally comparable indicators on employment, unemployment, occupations and other dimensions of work.
Useful for: finding comparable labour market indicators and introducing learners or practitioners to reliable international data sources.
Cedefop provides European research, data and analysis on vocational education and training, skills, occupations and labour market developments.
Useful for: exploring European skills intelligence and linking labour market developments with education and training.
Turn labour market information into Career Guidance
Labour market information becomes useful when practitioners can interpret it, assess its quality and connect it with an individual learner’s goals. These resources focus on how LMI can be translated into practical guidance and career-learning activities.
Cedefop’s European network of independent experts in lifelong guidance and career development. CareersNet supports knowledge exchange and contributes national and comparative intelligence on guidance policies and systems.
Useful for: following European developments and connecting system-level trends with national practice.

A research study on the role of LMI in career guidance and career education. It examines how guidance can help people access, understand and use labour market information, and addresses LMI quality, technology, stakeholder cooperation and practitioner skills.
Useful for: understanding the practitioner’s role as a bridge between labour market evidence and individual career decisions.

A short, highly visual example from Egypt showing how official labour market statistics can be converted into guidance-friendly information on growing sectors, occupations, graduate employment and self-employment.
Useful for: seeing how complex labour market statistics can be selected, simplified and presented in a form that supports education and career decisions.

A methodological guide to using LMI for anticipating and matching skills supply and demand. It covers data sources, analysis, interpretation, dissemination and the use of evidence by policy-makers, institutions, businesses and the public.
Useful for: building a deeper understanding of where LMI comes from, what it can and cannot show, and how different evidence sources can be combined.
Connect Career Guidance with employers and work-based learning
Employer engagement helps practitioners test labour market information against real workplace needs and gives learners access to work-based experiences, occupational insight and direct contact with employers.
Use Cedefop’s wider resource base to explore European approaches to work-based learning, vocational education and cooperation with employers.
Useful for: identifying models and evidence that can strengthen links between guidance, education and workplaces.
Use the OECD employment and skills resources to explore evidence on transitions between education and work, Career Guidance and employer links.
Useful for: examining how employer contact and labour market exposure can help learners understand occupations and make more informed choices.
The International Labour Organisation provides international resources on apprenticeships, skills development and work-based learning, including approaches that involve employers in developing workforce skills.
Useful for: connecting Career Guidance with apprenticeships, workplace learning and employer-supported pathways.
Euroguidance provides resources, examples and professional-development material for guidance practitioners across Europe.
Useful for: finding additional tools and examples that can support labour market learning, employer engagement and guidance practice.
Practical employer outreach
Employer engagement often begins with a simple conversation. This practical resource can be adapted to help practitioners prepare for first contact with employers, structure questions and agree on a clear next step.
A set of HubSpot call templates covering first contact, gatekeepers, discovery questions, referrals, objections and follow-up. The templates are written for commercial sales, but selected structures can be adapted for non-commercial employer outreach.
Useful for: preparing short employer calls, asking purposeful discovery questions and planning follow-up when seeking employer input, workplace visits, work-based learning opportunities or other forms of cooperation.
Note: Adapt the language and purpose to Career Guidance and partnership-building; the original resource is a sales template, not a Career Guidance tool.
