Excelsior is a permanent information system for employment and training, jointly established with the Ministry of labour and Welfare and the European Social Fund. It analyses the need in personnel of Italian businesses, by professional profiles. The data contained in the database is provided by the Chambers of Commerce, other administration file systems, and some information is also obtained through direct interviews with entrepreneurs.

Surveys are based on more than 100 thousand sample respondents/businesses, located throughout the national territory, and allow obtaining detailed information about labour market trends and the relating structural changes in terms of emerging profiles and training requirements. From a territory viewpoint, data is disaggregated down to province level. Surveys encompass all economic sectors and businesses of all sizes.

By processing interview results, forecasts are made about the flows of employees being recruited or dismissed and, most importantly, the most wanted professional profiles are indicated and their most relevant characteristics specified. Today, dealing with new professional profiles and vocational training, employment of non-EU citizens or difficulty in finding people with specific professional profiles without referring to Excelsior is very difficult. In fact, it is the only existing source of statistical data on such subjects.

This system is extremely important in supporting provincial, regional and national administrations in planning training activities or active labour policies. It is very valuable to trade associations and unions; to the various schools, universities and vocational training organisations, which need to focus training on the requirements expressed by the businesses (on the demand side), thus directly matching job supply and demand. By combining Excelsior employment forecasts and Istat workforce data, it was possible to put the System’s output within the wider framework of job supply and demand-related trends. This way, the system viability, in terms of its methodological, statistical and information reliability was successfully tested.

The Excelsior information System is undoubtedly one of the main strengths of the Chamber of Commerce economic information services and, thanks to its spreading, the Chambers of Commerce play an increasingly important role in labour market-related issues, and in areas such as vocational training and guidance.