On 4 April, at the 6th Ministerial meeting of the Trade and Technology Council (TTC), the Members of the EU-US Talent for Growth Task Force held their final meeting and presented their Task Force statement to the Co-Chairs of the TTC.
Over the course of the past year, the EU-US Talent for Growth Task Force has brought together government and private sector leaders from business, trade unions, and organisations that provide training. The exchanges of this high-level reflection group that took place in the context of the European Year of Skills have been centred around the four topics:
- training workers to meet business needs
- including women and underrepresented groups in technical jobs
- skills-based hiring
- credentials, including micro-credentials
Members adopted a statement presenting key messages that emerged from their work at the margins of the 6th TTC Ministerial in Leuven. They discussed their findings with TTC Co-Chairs European Commission Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager and US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, who had first announced the creation of the Task Force in December 2022.
In addition to the Task Force statement, the leaders of the workstreams adopted separate activity reports. While the OECD provided analytical support to the Task Force, collecting evidence through surveys and peer-learning workshops, and drafting papers with recommendations and implementable models for addressing the pressing skills shortages in the technology sector.