Analyst & Developer Changelog

All the things that are changing in Analyst, from data to features

Updated over a week ago

Overview

This page provides an overview of major changes to the Analyst platform, including:

  • Analyst

  • Developer

  • Talent Analyst

  • Staffing Analyst

  • College Analyst

  • Recruit

  • Global

For changes in the UK, see this article.

Note that not all changes are available to all users of the platform. If you are curious about a feature that is not available to you, please contact your account manager.


September 11, 2023: Retirement of CA 2022.3

Canadian datarun 2022.3 was retired on September 11, 2023. Only one datarun (2023.1) will be available in Canada until the next fall release.

August 17, 2023: Concentration datapoints available in more reports

Concentration datapoints (previously known as LQs) have been made widely available across multiple Table, Map, and Comparison reports (in the US). Now users can easily rank regions, occupations, and more by their preferred supply and demand concentration metrics.

You can read more about how we define concentration in the KB article here, and below are all the reports where you can access these powerful datapoints.

  • Employment Concentration are now available in the Job Postings Table, Job Postings Map, Occupation Table, Rank & Filter Occupations, Regional Side by Side, Market Comparison.

  • Profile Concentration are now available in the Job Postings Table, Job Postings Map, Occupation Table, Rank & Filter Occupations, Regional Side by Side, Market Comparison.

  • Posting Concentration are now available in the Job Postings Table, Occupation Table, Rank & Filter Occupations, Regional Side by Side, Market Comparison

August 11, 2023: Self-employment update notification

With the 2023.3 datarun, Lightcast fixed a bug that misstated "self-employment" counts in the 2022.4, 2023.1, and 2023.2 dataruns. This bug had overstated the number of self-employed individuals in large counties within each state, while understanding the number of self-employed individuals in small counties.

As a result, any comparisons to to prior dataruns will reflect these movements, with self-employment totals decreasing for large counties and increasing for small counties. Lightcast recommends shifting analyses to use 2023.3.

July 31, 2023: ISCO available in Global Job Postings

ISCO, also known as the International Standard Classification of Occupations, is a system developed by the International Labour Organization (ILO) to categorize and classify various occupations globally. It provides a standardized framework for organizing and comparing different types of jobs across countries and industries.

The ISCO classification system is designed to facilitate the collection, analysis, and dissemination of occupational data. It helps in understanding the composition of the workforce, analyzing employment trends, and comparing occupational structures between different countries or regions.

Now all global job postings are available by ISCO search.

July 28, 2023: US 2023.3 final release

This release includes the update to NAICS 2022 taxonomy, as well as the addition of OEWS wage and employment data for 2022.

The 2023.1 release has been retired and is no longer available in the tool.

July 28, 2023: Updated Canadian Company Classifier

Lightcast has updated its classification of companies in Canada, following on from work done earlier this month in the United States. With this, Lightcast will display better normalized company subsidiaries, and have better coverage of small employers. Posting counts for employers may shift slightly from previous analyses due to these improvements.

July 19, 2023: US 2023.3 beta release

This release includes the update to NAICS 2022 taxonomy, as well as the addition of OEWS wage and employment data for 2022.

July 1, 2023: Announced retirement of CA 2022.3

Canadian datarun 2022.3 will be retired on September 1, 2023. At that time, only one datarun (2023.1) will be available in Canada until the next fall release.

June 28, 2023: US Lightcast Sectors

The release of Lightcast Sectors brings Lightcast's research expertise directly into the Analyst platform US data. Each sector is built as a collaborative effort between Lightcast researchers and external experts, and provides a way to research and quantify job posting data for a specific, often niche segment of the labor market.

Lightcast Sectors are posting-based, rather than standard groups of occupations or skills or industries.

The initial release of Lightcast Sectors includes:

  • Green Jobs

  • Data Privacy/Protection

  • Artificial Intelligence

Learn more in this article.

June 21, 2023: Canada 2023.1 final release

For details on the datarun, see this article.

June 15, 2023: Canada 2023.1 in Beta

On June 15, 2023, updated Canadian data was released in beta to customers. With this release, Canadian occupations are updated to the most recent taxonomy: NOC 2021. See here for more details.

Two notable changes to the taxonomy and tagging:

  1. The NOC taxonomy is now 5 levels, as opposed to the prior four. The fifth level remains the most granular, aligned with what previously had been 4-digits. Saved reports and groups have been updated accordingly.

  2. Significant changes in NOC 0

    1. Old taxonomy name: Management Occupations

    2. New taxonomy name: Legislative and Senior Management Occupations

This Broad Occupational Category has decreased significantly, with many of the roles moving to other categories. This is reflected in both employment and postings data.

For a crosswalk of changes, see here.

June 12, 2023: New Advertised Salary Filter

Users now have the ability to get more granular job postings results with the new advertised salary filter, available in the left side bar of all job posting reports.

The default option is to include all job postings in your results, but now you can limit your results to only those job postings with salary observations. Then you’ll be given the additional option to narrow your results by an annual or hourly range.

For more details on how we calculate advertised salary in job postings, see our job postings methodology article here.

June 2, 2023: Location Quotient Renamed to Concentration

A Location Quotient (LQ) is a way to quantify how concentrated a characteristic of a particular region is compared to the nation. It is a powerful datapoint, but its name has often been an educational barrier that prevents many users from quickly understanding its value. That's why we're bringing clarity to the matter by removing the name "Location Quotient" altogether and renaming it to be more descriptive of the regional characteristic it's calculating.

  • Employment Concentration

  • Demographic Concentration

  • Profile Concentration

  • Posting Concentration

You can access these datapoints in a number of table, map, and comparison reports. If you'd like to learn more about the subject, check out our Knowledge Base article here.

June 2, 2023: Updated US Company Classifier

Lightcast has updated its classification of companies in the United States. With this, Lightcast will display better normalized company subsidiaries, and have better coverage of small employers. Posting counts for employers may shift slightly from previous analyses due to these improvements.

May 12, 2023: Job Postings Restatement

Lightcast updated its job postings feed, resulting in a decrease in total postings for March and April of 2023. See here for more details.

May 12, 2023: Search and Report by All Industries in Job Postings

Many of you have requested the ability to search job postings by all industries and not just 2-digit or 6-digit. You finally can! Now every level of the standard NAICS taxonomy is searchable in all job posting reports! (See the difference between Lightcast NAICS and standard NAICS in the article here).

In addition, the Top Industries ranking in Job Posting Analytics/Competition now has a level selection so that you can specify the industry level of interest without starting over in the report setup page.

May 11, 2023: Graduation Year Filter in Profile Analytics

We’ve introduced a new filter to the Profile Analytics report that lets users filter their data by graduation year.

This filter is particularly useful for identifying emerging trends in profile data. Additionally, the graduation year filter can be used in combination with the Institution, Program, and Education Level filters to gain even deeper insights into the data.

May 8, 2023: US 2023.2 datarun finalized

For details on the 2023.2 datarun, see this article.

May 1, 2023: View Employers Competing

The Job Posting Competition/Analytics summary packet at the top of the report now includes the total number of employers that are advertising for the specific role defined in the search parameters and are therefore competing for the same talent. This is contrasted to the total number of employers that are hiring generally within the region. Now instead of forcing users to go to Job Postings Table or Occupation Snapshot/Overview to find the competition data point, it’s right at the top of the report, ready for users to analyze and benchmark against.

April 27, 2023: Increased Occupation Granularity in Company Talent Profile Report

The Company Talent Profile report was improved to enable all SOC levels, not just the 2-digit. This gives users the ability to do company research at a much more granular level. For instance, instead of seeing the employee transition “Gain & Drain” chart for a company like General Electric which spans across several occupations, now users can filter by specific occupations like Mechanical Engineers in order to understand General Electric’s competitive and hiring landscape in detail. Also, the number of companies listed in the Gain & Drain chart has been increased from 50 to 100, giving users more data to analyze at a more granular level.

April 27, 2023: Enhanced Skills Insights

Salary Boosting Skills have been released in Analyst and Developer!

What are Salary Boosting Skills?
Salary Boosting skills are based on an advanced linear regression model that finds which skills have the largest effect on a salary within a particular occupation. We found that skills with this marker lead to a higher average salary in the selected occupation. Salary Boosting skills appear in the platform as a Yes or No visualized through a “” or “X”

Where can I find Salary Boosting Skills?
Salary Boosting skills can be found in the DDN Skills section in Occupation Overview and Snapshot reports.

April 27, 2023: DDN Occupational Skills! (Defining, Distinguishing, Necessary) Skills!

Lightcast is pleased to announce the release of the DDN Skills framework in Analyst and Developer! A new occupational view into skills!

What are DDN Skills?
DDN Skills are occupation-specific skill categories. Occupational skill categories describe the relationship between an occupation and a skill. This hierarchy begins with skills that are basic foundations of an occupation, graduating to advanced skills required for more senior or specialized roles that will set job seekers apart.

Occupational Skills:

  • Necessary skills: Necessary skills for an occupation are the ‘specialized skills’ required for that job and are relevant across other similar jobs. These are foundational skills for the broader career area.

  • Defining skills: Defining skills are the ‘specialized skills’ that represent the day-to-day tasks and responsibilities of the job.

  • Distinguishing skills: An occupation’s Distinguishing skills are the advanced skills that are called for occasionally. An employee with these skills is likely more specialized and able to differentiate themselves.

Where can I find DDN Skills?
The DDN skills framework can be found in the Occupation Overview/Snapshot reports in Analyst and Developer. The DDN skills framework requires at least one occupation as an input and since this report is focused on occupations and requires at least a single occupation before it can be run it is a natural starting spot for DDN skills. We will be working in the coming months to continue to expand where and how DDN skills are used in Analyst and Developer.

How can DDN Skills help me?
Viewing skills to this level of granularity and segmentation can be helpful in use cases such as:

  • Help job seekers identify what are “must have” skills on their resumes to improve their chances of landing their dream jobs

  • Improve your curriculum to keep it up to date with the most in-demand jobs and skills. Build a core curriculum around Necessary Skills. Build advanced tracks around Defining and Distinguishing Skills

  • Make your students and workers more marketable by teaching them distinguishing skills

Help students develop skills that improve their salary prospects by focusing on acquiring salary premium skills.


April 25, 2023: US 2023.2 datarun in BETA

For details on the 2023.2 datarun, see this article.


March 24, 2023: Improved Talent Supply by Compensation Report

We changed the underlying model in the Talent Supply by Compensation report in order to ensure coverage of all occupations and improve overall results.

The previous model relied on knowledge, skills, and abilities from ONET to determine occupation similarity. While this was mostly sufficient, we implemented a new model that analyzes skills from job postings over the past quarter. This change has led to more accurate and comprehensive results in the report, improving our users ability to analyze supply by compensation.

March 16, 2023: Updated Internship Filter in Posting Reports

We updated the internship filter in all of our posting reports for better control and clarity.

Previously users could filter postings by “Exclude Internships” or “Only Internships” with an intern checkbox. This was confusing for many users because there was no option to include internships, which was the default option for the other reports, such as the Occupation Overview. Now all the posting reports have the additional option and default setting to “Include Internships”, which aligns with the other reports across Analyst.

February 16, 2023: 2023.1 Datarun

We have released a revised version of demographics projections (2022-2033)

The 2023.1 run incorporated revisions to census estimates for 2020. In some places, those estimates created a break in the timeseries with 2019, and that break in the series unduly influenced projected in-migration and out-migration. Our new projections include newly released birth and death data from the CDC, which helps to mitigate the influence of the revised 2020 data. This said, use demographic projections with caution. Because of changes to birth, death, and migration patterns during COVID in 2020 and 2021, it is uncertain whether those new patterns represent a change in trajectory (for example, people leaving larger metropolitan areas and working remotely becomes a new normal), or a temporary aberration, and the next few years will look more like the late 2010’s rather than 2020-2021. With data currently available, it is not yet apparent which trends will hold and which will break, and therefore there is more uncertainty in the projected population.

Revision to ZIP- and tract-level employment methodology

This datarun introduced new methodology for our ZIP and tract employment calculations. Our main source of employment data is QCEW, which publishes down to the county level, and we then model that county-level employment down to the ZIP and tract level. In our previous methodology, zip and tract distribution was based solely on DBUSA. While this distribution was generally in keeping with our previous distribution methodology based on Zip Business Patterns released by the Census, there were still shortcomings to this approach, particularly when there were mismatches in NAICS classification between QCEW and DBUSA.

Our new methodology seeks to address these shortcomings. In our new methodology, ZIP- and tract-level employment is grounded in the employment figures produced by LODES, which publishes data ZCTA and tract-level data at the 2-digit NAICS, providing a much more grounded high level estimates. DBUSA is then used to distribute employment below the 2-digit NAICS, but has much more rigid guidelines provided by the LODES data. Note that we do not attempt to match LODES exactly, since there are differences between LODES and QCEW – rather, we use LODES as a control to inform our distribution of QCEW employment, without matching LODES exactly.

February 15, 2023: Suggested Occupations from Skills

Now when you enter a job description into the skills parser, Lightcast will use the skills found in the body of text to suggest associated occupations for you to search!

While there previously were only suggestions for skills and job titles, now there are additional suggestions for SOC, LOT, and O*NET occupations. These are determined using a model that intakes job postings data over the past quarter and analyzes the overlapping skill between occupations.

This new feature should help you find the best occupation to search for when working with tough job descriptions.

February 3, 2023: Suggested Similar Occupations

Now when you enter an occupation into a search input, Lightcast will suggest similar occupations for you to add to your search!

Occupations are considered similar to one another using a model that intakes job postings data over the past quarter and analyzes the overlapping skills between occupations.

Because the analysis is done at the skill level, similarity is only available at lower occupation levels: 5-digit (SOC), Occupations (LOT), Specialized Occupations (LOT), and O*NET. The similar occupation results are based on the first occupation in your search input, not the subsequent occupations.

Not only can this help you choose the right occupation, it also can help you find a more wholistic picture of the labor market. A person’s set of skills can usually be applied in more than one occupation. And so, including occupations with similar skill sets in your search can help you gain more insight on the potential supply or hidden demand.

January 16, 2022: Talent Analyst & Talent Transform Integration

We now have an integration between Talent Analyst and Talent Transform in BETA.

Talent Transform is another Lightcast product that helps organizations with job architecture. It analyzes and refines roles by building out skill profiles based on our vast open-sourced skill library and maps these skill profiles to standardized occupation taxonomies.

The integration unlocks benchmarking opportunities for Talent Analyst users by giving them the unique ability to search by the same role names used in their organization.

December 13, 2022: New Report: Career Pathways

Lightcast released a new report to help our clients understand career pathways. See feeder and next-step jobs, salary differences between job transitions, and the necessary skills needed to move from one job to the next.

November 18, 2022: New Release of LOT (US)

Lightcast has released a new and improved version of our proprietary Lightcast Occupation Taxonomy (LOT). Here’s what we’ve changed:

  • Added 253 specialized occupations and have refined 26 specialized occupations

  • Added 74 occupations and have refined 49 occupations

  • Improved coding and have moved to appropriate naming of occupations across geographies

To highlight a few of those new additions, you can now…

  • Search by twenty new software developer and architecture roles, such as Full Stack Developer, Blockchain Developer, or Integration Architect

  • Understand roles within the senior management of an organization with new Specialized Occupations including Chief Strategy Officer, Chief People Officer, and Chief Information Security Officer

  • Research the roles required in a modern human resources organization including occupations related to corporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

November 4, 2022: More Granularity in Job Posting Report Timeframes

Available now in all of our job posting reports, you can run reports for much more specific date ranges! This will allow you to see how job postings and trends in job posting data are changing much more in real-time.

October 27, 2022: GOT is now Lightcast Occupation Taxonomy (LOT)

We officially changed the name of our Global Occupation Taxonomy (GOT) to Lightcast Occupation Taxonomy (LOT).

LOT is a proprietary taxonomy composed of 4 different levels (Career Area, Occupation Group, Occupation, Specialized Occupation). This taxonomy has a 1-1 relationship between levels, allows users to start broadly and then get to a level far more granular than O*NET and SOC, and is also updated at least annually. The frequency with which this taxonomy is updated makes it especially useful for identifying emerging roles and occupations.

October 15, 2022: Filter Profile Analytics by “Highest Attainment”

You can now filter profiles in Profile Analytics by the highest education attainment level.

September 15, 2022: Filter Job Postings by Program

You can now filter job postings by Program. When a job posting calls out for a specific degree such as business administration or computer science you can now filter and find those postings. This filter is available in all of our job postings-focused reports.

September 12, 2022: Occupation Taxonomies Navigation

There’s an easy way in Job Posting Competition to navigate up and down occupation taxonomies, and even across from SOC to ONET to GOT.

September 2, 2022: Minimum Education Level

Find out the minimum education level required in job postings.

September 2, 2022: Remote Trends

Now you can view remote trends by job, location, company, or skill in Report Builder.

August 18, 2022: Median Posting Duration

It’s back! Median Posting Duration is now available in all posting reports. It was temporarily removed due to backend changes.

August 15, 2022: New Skill Category & Skill Subcategory

Search our job postings reports with new Skill Categories and Subcategories!

Now instead of having to search through individual skills you can just pick a broad category like “Science and Research” and search all skills associated or use a subcategory and get more detailed and search all skills associated with “Data Analysis.”

Skill categories and subcategories are available in the initial menu of our job postings reports and can be visualized in our Report Builder. We will be adding the ability to browse and search the skill categories and subcategories as well as improvements to how they are visualized and displayed in the future.

August 12, 2022: Easy access to the timeframe filter

Now you can see quickly select your desired timeframe at the report page setup and at the top of the left side bar within several of our reports.

August 2, 2022: Improvement to our Remote Job Posting Filter

We have improved our Remote Job Posting Filter! In addition to Remote or Non-Remote you can now filter by Hybrid and Unknown. These improvements will help you gain a better understanding of how remote work is changing and impacting your markets.

July 8, 2022: Supply and Demand Concentration Indices

Ranking markets using Supply (Job Family Employment) and Demand (Postings) concentration indices is now available in Geography Explorer and the Job Postings Table.

June 28, 2022: New Company Groups

Now you can create groups of company names to search for across different reports.

June 27, 2022: Emsi Burning Glass is now Lightcast

New name. Same data. We’re illuminating the future of work as we help our clients unlock new possibilities in the labor market. Find out more here!

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