Research Approach
Data limits are stated, not hidden. A first number published and later corrected is preferable to a perfect number never released. This page brings together, in one place, the sources used across all Vespri reports and the limits of each — instead of leaving them scattered in the appendices of individual issues.
Four defining traits.
Vespri segments engineering into operating industries — a methodological choice, not a standard taxonomy — and covers them in depth, rather than spreading coverage across a wider range of topics. A defined scope, read thoroughly.
Vespri starts from structural data — employment, financials, skills — and uses geopolitical context to explain it, not the other way around. The reading of events is always anchored to a verifiable number, not just to who has an interest in what.
Vespri operates at independent scale, based in Italy, following the data wherever it leads — Europe, the United States, Asia — without geographic boundaries fixed in advance by organizational structure.
Vespri keeps separate two functions that elsewhere tend to intertwine into a single funding source: free editorial on one side, paid advisory on proprietary data on the other. Two distinct tracks, so that one does not steer the other.
Public statistical and institutional bodies, public company financial statements, job-posting aggregators and recruiting portals with accredited data access — always within each source's terms of use.
Every report includes a methodology sheet: what the data captures, what it doesn't, and where a figure should be read as a lower bound, not an absolute value.
A public monitoring database on European corporate restructuring: 31,427 events, 2002-2026, 29 countries (EU-27, Norway, United Kingdom). It records the year of announcement, not the year jobs actually disappear — a multi-year plan weighs in full on the announcement year. UK coverage stops after January 31, 2020 (Brexit). Industry classification is heuristic, based on company-name recognition and spot-checked: roughly 90% of all events concern non-engineering industries and are excluded from the analysis.
81 listed European stocks, multi-industry, 2022-2025 history.
A job-posting aggregator with API data access: breadth across multiple industries, four geographic areas, dozens of companies — but only a truncated snippet of the description. Percentages from this source are a lower bound on the real prevalence of each skill, not an exact share.
Direct access to the public endpoints exposed by the recruiting platforms of the companies analyzed: full posting text, but only for the 27 companies — out of 93 total — that expose an accessible endpoint. 5,887 of the 16,386 total postings, averaging 4,199 characters per posting.
Limits collected here explicitly
Full methodology available on request for anyone citing a Vespri figure in a report, an internal note or an article.