This contribution starts by looking at the political-economic approaches to skill formation and deployment in Slovenia in the period of (a) post-socialist transformation, (b) EU accession, and (c) post-2008 recession and aftermath. It particularly considers the neo-liberal turn and its increasing dependence on supranational institutions and the weakening of social dialogue (Stanojević, 2018; Stanojević et al 2016). Even though educational and training institutions have been supposed to play a key role of strategic human resource development the labour market orientation and relevance of some of these institutions can be the subject of significant improvement (Pavlin, Grigić 2013; Pavlin, 2018). Several reforms of skill formation implemented were based on the approach of collective skills formation with the partial responsibilities delegated to employers. On the secondary level of education this is exemplified by the attempts to introducing dual VET in addition to the school-based VET system. On the tertiary level some attempts are being made to align study programmes better with labour market requirements (Pavlin, 2019). The main focus of our contribution is to explore how skill formation processes have been reflected in selected sectoral particularities. We explore dynamics in four sectors: the well-regulated health sector; the export-oriented metal industry that demands sector- and firm-specific skills; and the two labour-intensive, increasingly de-skilled sectors of hospitality and retail. Important difficulties in skill formation approach in Slovenia are related to lack of joint responsibility for skill formation amongst the social partners and a high reliance of stakeholders on state interventions in this field. Argumentation in this contribution is based on the emerging chapter of a book with the working title “Skill Formation in Central and Eastern Europe” to be published by Peter Lang

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