What the numbers mean
Every occupation is a set of skills. Two occupations that share most of theirs are a short move apart, whatever their titles suggest. Each record reports how much of one job the other already covers, and what is left.
No AI guessing. Just skills.
Where the data comes from
Everything is built on ESCO, the European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations classification, published openly by the European Commission. It describes 3,039 occupations and 13,939 skills, and records which skills each occupation needs and which of those are required rather than optional.
No job adverts, no scraped salaries, no survey, and no language model. The figures are computed from the classification, which is why they are consistent across every page and why none of them can flatter you.
Overlap
Overlap answers one question: of everything the target job asks for, how much do you already do? An overlap of 80% means four fifths of what that role is expected to handle is already part of your current occupation. Skills the target role treats as required count for more than the ones it treats as optional, because missing a nice-to-have is not the same as missing a requirement.
Overlap is directional, and that matters more than anything else on this page. Moving into a narrow speciality is a different problem from moving out of one, so the figure for A to B will usually differ from B to A. A single symmetric “similarity” score would hide exactly the thing you came here to find out.
Learning distance
Overlap tells you how much is already yours. Learning distance tells you how much work the rest is. It accounts for both how much is missing and how specialised those missing skills are: a gap made of skills that appear in many occupations is easier to close than the same number of skills that appear in almost none.
It is reported on a 0 to 100 scale in four bands:
- AdjacentUnder 30 · mostly a retitle
- Moderate30 to 55 · a real move with a short list to learn
- Substantial55 to 75 · expect deliberate study
- Career change75 and up · the overlap helps, but this is a rebuild
The three tables on a record
What you already bring lists the skills that carry straight over, led by the ones fewest other occupations ask for. Those are the part of your background another applicant is least likely to have, so they are worth putting first on an application.
What you may need to learn groups the missing skills into named areas rather than a flat list, ordered so the areas carrying the most required skills come first. Inside each area, required skills sit above optional ones.
Where to start names the few a target role is least likely to hire without. The ordering comes from the skill data, not from what pays.
Which moves have a record
3,008 occupations have a page, and 15,303 moves have a full record. A pair is left out when the two jobs share too little for the comparison to say anything useful, and also when they overlap so much that one is simply the same job under another name. Publishing the rest would mean thousands of pages with nothing on them.
What these figures cannot tell you
This is a map of skill overlap. It is not careers advice and not a prediction about hiring. It does not know that a particular field wants a particular certificate, that a local market is oversupplied, that a role pays badly, or that you would hate the work. It cannot see your experience, your qualifications or your circumstances — only the occupation you named.
Treat the gap list as a starting point for your own research rather than a syllabus. The figures are honest about what they measure, and that is the only claim this site makes.
Attribution
ESCO data © European Union. Reused under the ESCO terms of use, which permit reuse including commercial reuse, with attribution and without implying endorsement. Career Overlap is an independent project and is not endorsed by, affiliated with, or produced in cooperation with the European Commission.