About the Lightcast Skills Taxonomy
Lightcast Skills is a taxonomy of over 34,000 skills, built from hundreds of millions of job postings, resumes and online profiles. Lightcast defines a skill as any attribute an employer may use to describe the requirements for a job, or a candidate may use to stand out from other candidates.
Skills act as a common language for the labor market. They give granular detail, can be compared across countries and languages, and show where demand is heading.
New skills are added to the taxonomy by our in-house taxonomists, who research emerging and outdated skills and review customer requests.
Structure
The taxonomy has three tiers:
Category: broad groups of skills by industry or functional specialism. From v10 this includes Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Subcategory: groups of similar skills used to perform a particular aspect of a job, for example ‘Large Language Models’.
Skill: the individual skill, a unique concept describing for example ‘Deep Learning’ or ‘Python (Programming Language)’.
Skill types
As well as the taxonomy hierarchy, we organize skills into different types:
Common Skills, which have wide purchase across the labor market, such as Communication or Problem Solving.
Specialized Skills, such as ‘Java (Programming Language)’ or ‘Financial Analysis’.
Certifications and Licenses, such as ‘CompTIA Security+’.
Spoken Languages and Software skills are also included and can be filtered. See Skills for more detail.
Skill descriptions
Most skills have a description, written from our taxonomists’ research with the help of AI tools. Sources including Wikipedia and Wiktionary are also used as references.
Skills Methodology and Classification
In the Lightcast Skills Taxonomy, each skill has one official name. Our English language models also recognize aliases, acronyms, abbreviations and historic names when classifying skills.
The posting or profile text is segmented and tokenized, removing extra characters such as punctuation and line breaks.
The model scans the text for word sequences that indicate a skill.
The surrounding context decides which skill is meant. For example, "AWS" could mean American Welding Society or Amazon Web Services.
A confidence score is assigned, and only predictions above our accuracy thresholds are shown.
Lightcast Skills Taxonomy is also classified and available in a range of other languages, fully explained in Global Skills.
Updates and release cadence
Lightcast Skills is refreshed every 4 weeks. Each refresh can add new skills, remove or consolidate old ones, and update coding and terminology.
New skills are added every month, and we welcome input from industry experts.
Consolidation is ongoing. Nearly 500 skills were consolidated over several years before v10, and smaller consolidations will continue.
Descriptions arrive one release after a new skill's name, so expect a one month delay before a new skill has a description.
All changes, including the full v10 consolidation list, are published in the changelog.
What's new in Skills v10
Version 10, released soon, is the 10th major release of the Lightcast Skills Taxonomy and brings two major immediate changes to the user experience, while preparing the ground for further innovations in 2027.
1. A new Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning category
AI related skills were previously spread across several categories. From v10 they sit in one category with 12 dedicated subcategories, so you can find and analyze AI skills directly in Analyst or the API. New AI skills will be added to this category as they emerge.
The subcategories are:
AI Copilots and Chatbots
AI Strategy, Governance and Ethics
AI and ML Infrastructure
Applied Generative AI
Autonomous Agents and Reinforcement Learning
Computer Vision and Image Processing
Deep Learning
Large Language Models
Machine Learning
Natural Language Processing
Speech and Voice Technology
Symbolic AI and Optimization
2. Consolidation of overlapping skills
We have merged over 1,000 skills into existing skills so that each skill represents one distinct concept. For example, Deep Learning Methods is now part of Deep Learning. You will now find all postings under a single skill, rather than needing to know about both.
Overlapping skills rarely appeared in the same posting, so the average number of skills per posting or profile will remain consistent. The data will give clearer, more consistent signals. The largest consolidations are listed below, and the full list will be published in the Skills Taxonomy Changelog
Consolidated skill | Now part of |
Restaurant Management | Restaurant Operation |
Virtualization | Virtual Computing |
Power Distribution | Electric Power Distribution |
Dental Hygiene | Oral Hygiene |
Dementia Care | Dementia |
Construction Project Management | Construction Management |
Nursing Home Care | Nursing Homes |
Laboratory Techniques | Laboratory Procedures |
Animal Welfare | Animal Care |
Safety Codes | Safety Standards |
Farm Equipment | Agricultural Equipment |
Patient Coordination | Care Coordination |
Water Resources | Water Resource Development |
Patient Care Management | Care Management |
Child Safeguarding | Child Protection |
Family Counseling | Family Therapy |
Robotic Systems | Robotics |
Chinese Language | Mandarin Chinese |
Basic Writing | Writing |
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