Skills, Europe's Workforce and International Mobility: The 2026 Picture

EURES publishes a twice-yearly EU Shortage Occupations report. The 2025/26 edition (published December 2025) lists 42 shortage occupations across 30 EURES countries.

• Digital — software developers, cybersecurity specialists, data scientists, AI engineers (shortage in 25+ countries).
• Green — heat-pump installers, solar PV technicians, energy-efficiency engineers, environmental scientists (shortage in 22 countries).
• Healthcare — nurses, GPs, healthcare assistants, dentists (shortage in 28 countries).
• Hospitality — chefs, hotel managers, multilingual front-desk staff (shortage in 19 countries).
• Advanced manufacturing — welders, CNC machinists, electromechanics, industrial maintenance (shortage in 23 countries).

These shortages are not evenly distributed. Germany, the Netherlands and the Nordics report the deepest digital and green shortages; Spain, Italy and Portugal report the sharpest hospitality and healthcare gaps; Central Europe leads on manufacturing shortages.

International mobility produces three measurable effects on the labour market.

• Geographic redistribution — mobility moves workers from oversupply regions to shortage regions without permanent migration.
• Skills acquisition — mobile workers acquire languages, intercultural skills and sector exposure that the home labour market cannot deliver.
• Employability uplift — Erasmus+ alumni show a 23% higher employment rate 12 months post-graduation vs non-mobile peers (Erasmus+ Higher Education Impact Study, 2023).

Cedefop's 2025 European Skills Index ranks countries with above-EU mobility rates 12 percentage points higher on average for 'skills activation' than countries below the median.

• Erasmus+ KA131 — short and long mobility for higher-education learners. €3.3 billion 2026 budget; primary lever for shortage closure within programme countries.
• Erasmus+ KA171 — international credit mobility with partner countries (Western Balkans, Eastern Partnership, Southern Mediterranean, Asia, Africa). €410 million 2026 budget.
• Erasmus+ KA122/121 VET — work-based learning mobility for vocational learners, the fastest-scaling instrument for closing technical-trade shortages.
• ALMA (Aim Learn Master Achieve) — 18-to-29 NEET-focused programme funded under ESF+, designed for low-qualified young adults.
• European Solidarity Corps — adjacent instrument with a 2026 budget of €157 million, mainly for the social and green sectors.

• Digital & tech — Germany, Ireland, Netherlands and Estonia absorb the most international tech interns. Co-op-style 6-month placements outperform 2-month ones for actual skill transfer.
• Hospitality — Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece run year-round demand; multi-language profiles (EN + DE + ES) are the most placeable.
• Green sector — Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands have the deepest shortage and the strongest training infrastructure for incoming interns.
• Healthcare — regulated profession; mobility primarily takes the form of clinical placements within EU directive 2005/36/EC frameworks rather than open-market internships.
• Advanced manufacturing — Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia and northern Italy have strong VET reception capacity for welding, mechatronics and CNC.

• Re-balance the destination mix toward shortage countries instead of the historic top-3 (Spain, France, Germany).
• Extend placement durations — 4-to-6 months consistently outperform 2-to-3 months for both skills transfer and post-mobility hiring.
• Build dual-track partnerships — pair an academic partner with a host-company partner in the same region to close the loop from learning agreement to hiring.
• Track outcomes — measure employment status of alumni at 6 and 12 months; pilots with this discipline see grant retention improve by 18% on average.

• Treat the internship as a recruitment funnel — 38% of Erasmus+ interns in 2024 received a job offer from their host within 12 months (Eurobarometer 2024).
• Offer a stipend wherever legally possible — paid placements increase application volume by 4–6x and dramatically improve the quality pool.
• Publish role-specific job descriptions instead of generic 'intern' postings — the conversion rate from view to application triples.
• Provide accommodation guidance — the single biggest reason interns withdraw between offer and start is housing.

• European Year of Skills (2023) is followed by the EU Skills Union (announced March 2025) — €4 billion across 2025–2027.
• Net-Zero Industry Academies — first cohort opens in 2026 with mobility components funded through Erasmus+ and ESF+.
• Pact for Skills — sector partnerships covering 25 industrial ecosystems, with mobility as one of the four mandatory levers.
• Recognition of qualifications — the 2025 revision of the Recommendation on automatic recognition simplifies cross-border ECTS transfer for 2026 mobility cohorts.

• Universities — audit your destination mix against the EURES shortage occupations list and rebalance.
• VET providers — apply for KA122-VET 2026 if not already in a KA121 consortium; the call closes 4 October 2026.
• Host companies — convert at least one shortage-occupation role into a structured Erasmus+ traineeship offer with a defined supervisor and learning outcomes.