New Approaches to Capturing Real Time Labor Market Information

The following is an overview of emerging sources of “real time” job market information based on a series of conversations I’ve had recently. As labor market components – both on the supply (resumes) and demand (job postings) side – increasingly migrate to the web, the fact that the data is minable and searchable is extremely valuable in terms of its potential for informing current labor market indicators.

• Demand side – A firm called Wanted Analytics is leading a robust effort to search across the majority of job posting boards (Careerbuilder.com, LinkedIn, Monster.com, staffing agencies, etc.). They’ve licensed their data to Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com and other labor market query tools like the U.S. Conference Board’s Help Wanted Online (which the Chicago Workforce Investment Council (CWIC) bases its “Where are the Jobs?-Chicago (PDF)” report on). This information is useful especially for workforce training and education efforts.

• Supply side – Careerbuilder.com and Monster.com have independently developed for-fee query tools that provide supply-side information about job seekers sourced from the resumes in their respective databases; unfortunately, neither searches outside their own database (although Careerbuilder.com is reportedly trying to partner with LinkedIn). Monster’s supply side report (PDF) is a summary of available Chicago job seeker data. The hope is that the supply-side data from job seekers could be used to inform job projections (such as the 2018 future demand projections (PDF) CWIC provides through EMSI consulting), corporate recruiting efforts, and education program development.

• Demand + supply – there is broad interest in marrying the supply (resumes) and demand (job postings) data to inform “skillshed” analyses, workforce training programs, education, and corporate recruitment. Currently, Monster and Careerbuilder are in the early stages of trying to do this: both have licensed the job postings demand data from Wanted Analytics. Toward the same end, Wanted Analytics hopes to build out the supply part of its tool through partner data (they currently rely on BLS data by occupation for their supply-side information). Below is a graphic from Monster.com summarizing their supply/resumes + Wanted Analytics demand/job postings data: