Geneva, 25 June 2026 — The International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) convened the second meeting of the Project Advisory Group (PAG) for the G20 feasibility study on an International Reference Classification of Occupations by Skill and Qualification Requirements.
The meeting reviewed progress since the first PAG session and presented the emerging design of a prototype classification linked to ISCO-08. The study aims to assess the feasibility of developing a practical, globally relevant reference tool that can help countries compare occupational skill and qualification requirements while preserving space for national context.
Participants reviewed early findings from the analysis of existing national and regional frameworks. The review confirmed that skills and knowledge requirements can be extracted across different systems, but also highlighted key methodological challenges. These include variation in how frameworks define “skills”, differences in levels of granularity, limited availability of measurement data, and the difficulty of comparing qualification requirements across national systems.
The project team presented a proposed prototype structure covering core skills, technical occupation-specific skills, knowledge, tools and technology, regulatory and licensing requirements, qualifications, tasks, and work contexts. The prototype also includes analytical features such as essential or optional status, importance, level, frequency, and thematic tags for green, digital, and care-related requirements.
A demo occupational profile for Environmental Protection Professionals was also presented, illustrating how source-attributed information from multiple frameworks can be consolidated into a transparent evidence record. The approach is designed to ensure that each requirement remains traceable to its original source, including the country, framework, occupation title, and source concept.
The next phase of work will focus on refining the methodology to populate the prototype. This will include expert review of extracted concepts, validation of candidate clusters, and discussion of how qualification levels could be better understood or mapped across different systems. PAG members will be invited to provide technical feedback on working definitions, concept validation, and the consistency of analytical feature assignments.
A third PAG meeting is tentatively planned for the end of September 2026 to review progress on prototype development and gather further feedback from members.