Lightcast Data
Lightcast gathers and integrates labor market data from tons of different sources, but the main three are from employer job posting advertisements, professional career profiles, and government and private-sector sources.
Using various taxonomies to organize and bring the data together, Lightcast creates a comprehensive view of the labor market across the globe, organized into an international dataset (Global) and three in-depth national datasets (US, UK, CA).
Keeping this comprehensive view up to date can be difficult since data sources and taxonomies update at different times, especially across countries. While profile and job posting data can be updated more frequently based on what's found online, the government sourced data is dependent on various timelines from different agencies and programs.
Lightcast Dataruns
Lightcast sets a regular update cadence for all government sourced data and taxonomies with the goal of always providing the latest available information. This update is what we refer to as a "datarun."
The international and national datasets each have their own datarun cadence:
Global - updated four times a year
United States - updated four times a year
United Kingdom - updated two times a year
Canada - updated two times a year
Every datarun is released with a "beta" version and available to customers to explore if they so choose, but typically a week later, we release the "final" version of the datarun which then becomes the automatic default datarun version for all users.
In the product, users are able to access the most recent datarun version as well as the previous two versions at all times in order to help with the transition between updates. See our article here to understand how to change datarun versions.
Things to Keep in Mind
Remember that dataruns change the government sourced data, but have no impact on the data from job postings or profiles, except on rare occasion when dataruns introduce new government taxonomies, which provide an updated way to search the job postings and profiles.
Each datarun is unique. As you might imagine, available data is not entirely consistent across countries. For example, demographic information is collected and available more often in the United States than other regions. Updating that type of data in the US datarun does not mean that the same type of data is updated in a separate datarun.
Additionally, each national dataset is published in their locally recognized taxonomies (occupation, industry, education classifications, etc.), while the Global dataset uses consistent taxonomies across countries to enable internationally comparative data. For example, the US, UK, and CA each use different occupation taxonomies, but Lightcast developed a single international Lightcast Occupation Taxonomy.
For more details regarding the data and taxonomy sources, as well as their latest release dates, see the following tables for each national dataset: