Zavmo data report · 2026-Q3 · 13 July 2026

The UK Skills Ladder

How mapped is the route from a job to a regulated qualification in the UK? We audited the full Zavmo careers graph: every role, every National Occupational Standard, every Ofqual-regulated qualification. Then we measured the connections between them.

76.8%

of the UK's 58,802 mapped roles have a complete, navigable route from job to skills to regulated qualification. Every one of those routes runs through named national standards, not guesswork.

58,802

UK roles

14,078

National Occupational Standards

601,033

regulated qualifications (RQF)

9.3

skills per mapped role, on average

Three in four roles have a mapped route

Mapped route · 45,177 roles (76.8%) Not yet mapped · 13,625 roles

"Mapped" means at least one authoritative role → standard link; all mapped roles reach a full role → skill → qualification chain.

More than 1.5 million connections

Role → skill (authoritative) 419,922 Skill → qualification (suggested match) 140,780 Role → qualification (suggested match) 1,006,406

Suggested-match links are machine-inferred (top-10 vector similarity per standard), presented as matches for a human to confirm, never as regulator fact. Authoritative links come from the standards themselves.

The numbers

MeasureValueBasis
UK roles in the graph58,802audited count
National Occupational Standards14,078audited count
Regulated qualifications (RQF)601,033audited count
Roles with a fully mapped route45,177 (76.8%)audited count
Role → skill links419,922authoritative
Skill → qualification links140,780machine-inferred
Role → qualification links1,006,406machine-inferred
Suggested qualifications per standard10derived, machine-inferred

Source: Zavmo careers graph — read-only production audit, 13 July 2026. Built on Ofqual Register of Regulated Qualifications (Open Government Licence v3.0) and UK National Occupational Standards (NOS). How this data is built →

Writing about UK skills or careers? The summary and figures are free to use with attribution: press summary, or email hello@zavmo.ai.