The latest Canada public data was set to the default datarun in the Analyst platform as part of its final release. Details on the change can be found here.

The latest Canada public data was released in beta in the Analyst platform. Details on the change can be found here.

We've released the Federal Industry Table to the Analyst platform. This report provides close to raw historical data about the federal workforce from QCEW. This report does not utilize Lightcast NAICS.

While this table does not unsuppress like the standard Industry table, and is limited to jobs, earnings, and establishments data, Lightcast is providing this for users who are curious to understand potential local impacts of cuts to the federal workforce.

Lightcast plans to maintain this new report at least through 2025.

The Nested Posting Table report in US, UK, CA now has additional filters, allowing customers to get even more granular and creative with their rankings. Search for the top career areas at the top companies; the top skill categories in the top programs; top industries in the top cities; and more. Whatever filters exist in the Job Posting Analytics report are the ones now available in the Nested Posting Table.

Granular Gender Data was released last year in Global, US, CA but it is now finally available in the UK Profile Analytics report across all verticals.

Lightcast traditionally leverages government LMI data in order to get gender demographics. While this data source is comprehensive and robust, it has the tradeoff of being less granular. This new release of gender data is based on our Profile data source. While Profiles have their own limitations of comprehensiveness, using this data source unlocks the opportunity for users to run very granular searches (region, occupation, company, school, skill) and get back gender breakouts for any benchmarking use-cases.

Lightcast uses a model that infers gender based on first names found in our profile database. Leveraging profiles that have self reported gender, as well as public sources of gender corpus data that is crowd sourced male/female based on native speakers, we developed an algorithm that infers gender for each profile resume if possible. We are fairly aggressive about NOT assigning gender where there is ambiguity and we do not take into consideration variants in international names such as “Jan” being female in the US but male in Eastern Europe. This profile would be marked “Unknown”.

Talent Analyst Global now includes data for China, Japan, and South Korea. This dataset includes job postings and online profiles. The total number of supported countries is now 41!

This is included in the LF 2025.1 datarun, which you can find more details about in the release notes.

The latest version of the Lightcast Occupation Taxonomy (LOTv7) was released across the Analyst platform. This taxonomy is now reflected in all job postings and profiles data and reports in all nations in the platform. You can find more details about his update in our article here.

For customers who wish to view LOTv6, this taxonomy is maintained on prior dataruns in each nation.

The latest UK public data was released in the Analyst platform. This update includes an update to data powering the Input-Output model in the UK. Details on the change can be found here.

The latest UK public data was released in beta in the Analyst platform. Details on the change can be found here.

Users will now find an increased number of reports within their particular application, as Lightcast streamlined access to data across the platform.

The Postings Time Series in Job Posting Analytics now enables customers to view 'Custom Timeframe' options, which align with the selected filters. Importantly, this allows analysis of trends further back in time, including to trends before the Covid pandemic.

Users are now able to create Company, Skill, and Job Title Groups direct from reports, rather than having to navigate to the Groups page specifically.

Additionally, users can now hide groups created using outdated taxonomies for ease of navigation.

Lightcast updated our methodology around national level job postings data. This changes result in more coverage Globally with no impact on United States. You can find more details in knowledge base articles here for job postings.

Lightcast updated our methodology around location in UK postings data. This change resulted in better coverage of London Boroughs and minimal change for overall volumes. You can find more details in knowledge base articles here

Lightcast enhanced the Nested Posting Table report, found among other Job Postings reports in US, UK, and Canada. Specifically:

Lightcast released the final version of the US Datarun 2025.1, which is now the default for all users. For more information on what changes are included in this datarun, please see the data release notes.

Lightcast released the beta version of the US Datarun 2025.1, which is now optional for all users. For more information on what changes are included in this datarun, please see the data release notes.

The latest datarun in our Global dataset (LF 2024.5) included the following updates:

Lightcast has officially removed the remaining blacklisted occupations which means that the entire LOT taxonomy (all 1900 occupation categories) is now available for workforce estimate counts. This update to the WEMo also included the latest round of available data from government sources to provide customers with the most up to date workforce estimates at a granular level. To learn more about the model's methodology, see our article for Workforce Estimation Model (WEMo).

Costa Rica has been added to our repository of countries available in the Global dataset. Data is available by job postings and online profiles. The total number of supported countries is now 38!

On November 6, 2024, Lightcast released US Datarun 2024.4 to final. With this change:

More information in the data release notes.

Also on November 6, 2024, Lightcast updated its base filters applied to Profiles data in Canada Analyst to only include profiles where a Province and/or Territory is specified. This is consistent with the approach used in our USA Profiles (refer to our methodology article for details). Profile counts displayed in Canada Analyst decreased as result.

Did you know in 2022 (when ChatGPT broke the internet) San Francisco saw a decline in AI related job postings but an increase in advertised salaries?

New improvements have been made to the Job Postings Trend chart in Global and to the Advertised Salary Trend chart in US, UK, CA.

In Global, the postings trend line used to be limited to the past 12 months, but this is no longer the case! Now it aligns to the timeframe that users set. (Note however that not all countries have stable historical job postings trends. So we added a disclaimer to the report if you go back too far. See this KB for more details.)

In US, UK, CA, the advertised salary trend line frequently displayed a “Not enough data” message. We made some adjustments to the methodology so that users will see this message less often! You might see a bit more choppy trend lines on occasion, but you will at least see data when data is available.

In order to meet evolving compliance requirements, and to align with our commitment to privacy, Lightcast removed Personally Identifiable Information from the Profile Analytics sample profiles list. This information had previously been unavailable on a state-by-state basis, as well as outside the United States; this change brings consistency across our platform.

There was a common problem where users didn't know which Occupation or Region was the right one for them to choose in Global. So Lightcast made some improvements!

Previously in the LOT Occupation filter, if you tried searching for a job title like “warehouse material handler”, you wouldn't see any search results. Now users will receive recommended LOTs whether they search for a job title or a keyword (and this applies to all LOT search filters across the platform, not just in Global!).

We also made an adjustment so that results will no longer prioritize manager roles unless specified. If you search “software”, you’ll first receive Software Development (Occupation Group) and not the Software Development / Engineering Manager (Specialized Occupation).

Previously in the Region filter, if you tried searching for “london”, you would typically see several options and have no idea which London to choose. Now things are better! Users will notice country specific indicators on all the metropolitan areas. So now you can now distinguish between the London in the US, UK, CA or South Africa.

The US 2024.4 datarun includes new definitions of MSAs, as well as new County definitions in Connecticut. More information about this update can be found here.

Did you know that Paris has seen a significant increase in remote job postings over the past year? Job Location is now an available job posting filter in Talent Analyst Global!

Users can now filter job posting results by Remote, Non-Remote, Hybrid, and Unknown in the Job Posting Analytics, Job Posting Table, and Global Dashboard reports. This expands our users research capabilities, allowing them to find further insights in the global labor market, specifically in the remote workforce. This also brings more consistency across our US, UK, CA, and Global datasets.

Indonesia has been added to our repository of countries available in the Global dataset of Talent Analyst. The total number of supported countries is now 37!

Checkout the full list of supported countries in this article: Available Countries in Global

Search our job postings data in Global 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 Job Posting Analytics, Job Posting Table, and Global Dashboard reports.

Granular Gender Data was released a few months ago inside Global, but it is now also available in the US and CA Profile Analytics report across all verticals.

Lightcast traditionally leverages government LMI data in order to get gender demographics. While this data source is comprehensive and robust, it has the tradeoff of being less granular. This new release of gender data is based on our Profile data source. While Profiles have their own limitations of comprehensiveness, using this data source unlocks the opportunity for users to run very granular searches (region, occupation, company, school, skill) and get back gender breakouts for any benchmarking use-cases.

Lightcast uses a model that infers gender based on first names found in our profile database. Leveraging profiles that have self reported gender, as well as public sources of gender corpus data that is crowd sourced male/female based on native speakers, we developed an algorithm that infers gender for each profile resume if possible. We are fairly aggressive about NOT assigning gender where there is ambiguity and we do not take into consideration variants in international names such as “Jan” being female in the US but male in Eastern Europe. This profile would be marked “Unknown”.

On October 1, 2024, Lightcast released UK Datarun 2024.2 to final, making it the default UK datarun. Access to 2023.2 datarun is no longer supported.

More information in the data release notes.

New Total Population and Total Labor Force columns are available in the Global Dashboard report in Talent Analyst. This data provides users with more economic context to the typical labor market data at the country level so that users can have more insights to compare and analyze countries while doing their global research.

Total Population – The population for the entire country, based on statistics from population censuses, vital statistics registration systems, or sample surveys pertaining to the recent past and based on assumptions about future trends. Data is collected from The World Factbook published by the CIA and is only available at the country level.

Total Labor Force – The labor force for the entire country, defined as the number of people ages 15 or older who are employed or seeking work. Data is collected from The World Factbook published by the CIA and is only available at the country level.

In the latest Global Datarun 2024.4, Lightcast updated the WEMo methodology to provide customers with more accurate workforce estimates and unlock over 400 new LOT Specialised Occupations.

More information in the data release notes.

Hungary has also been added to our repository of available countries. Customers can now see Hungarian job postings, online profiles, and workforce estimates. The total number of supported countries is now 36!

Checkout the full list of supported countries in this article: Available Countries in Global

This is the Final release of a typical Analyst datarun.

In the latest Global Datarun 2024.4, Lightcast updated the WEMo methodology to provide customers with more accurate workforce estimates and unlock over 400 new LOT Specialised Occupations.

More information in the data release notes.

Hungary has also been added to our repository of available countries. Customers can now see Hungarian job postings, online profiles, and workforce estimates. The total number of supported countries is now 36!

Checkout the full list of supported countries in this article: Available Countries in Global

This is the Beta release of a typical Analyst datarun.

Lightcast released a new job postings report on the platform in the US, UK, CA called the Nested Posting Table. This report offers a powerful way to explore and analyze job posting data by two different facets, or dimensions. Whether you're a labor market researcher, business service planner, or an employer evaluating workforce opportunities, this tool saves time and effort by consolidating key insights into a single, interactive table. See more details in the Nested Posting Table article.

Lightcast's popular report Profile Analytics is now available in the CA dataset of the Analyst Platform. In this report, you can explore talent supply with online profiles. See where talent is located, what skills they hold, and which companies typically employ them.

On September 19, 2024, Lightcast released UK Datarun 2024.2 to beta.

More information in the data release notes.

Advertised Salary is now an available job posting filter in Global reports of Talent Analyst. Just like in the US, UK, CA, this filter empowers customers with more research capabilities so they can see the pay transparency across different companies, regions, jobs, and skills.

This is located in Job Posting Analytics, Job Posting Table, and Global Dashboard.

Years of Experience is now an available job posting filter in Global reports of Talent Analyst. This filter empowers customers to see even more specificity in the global labor market and compare talent demand with the same experience levels across different regions, companies, skills, and more.

This is located in Job Posting Analytics, Job Posting Table, and Global Dashboard.

Note that the filter only identifies minimum required years of experience as specified within the job postings. Not all postings include an experience level; the unspecified postings will not be displayed when this filter is applied.
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Example: If you filter by 3-5 years, your results will include postings that accept candidates with at least 3, 4, or 5 years of experience.

Croatia has been added to our repository of countries available in the Global dataset of Talent Analyst. The total number of supported countries is now 35!

Checkout the full list of supported countries in this article: Available Countries in Global

Granular gender data is now available in the global reports of Talent Analyst (Occupation Snapshot, Profile Analytics, Global Dashboard, Job Posting Table).

Lightcast has historically leveraged government LMI data in order to get gender demographics. While this data source is comprehensive and robust, it has the tradeoff of being less granular. This new release of gender data in Talent Analyst Global is based on our Profile data source.

While Profiles have their own limitations of comprehensiveness (since countries and occupations vary on how large of a profile sample size is available), using this data source unlocks the opportunity for users to run very granular searches (region, occupation, company, school, skill) and get back gender breakouts for any benchmarking use-cases.

Lightcast uses a model that infers gender based on first names found in our profile database. Leveraging profiles that have self reported gender, as well as public sources of gender corpus data that is crowd sourced male/female based on native speakers, we developed an algorithm that infers gender for each profile resume if possible. We are fairly aggressive about NOT assigning gender where there is ambiguity and we do not take into consideration variants in international names such as “Jan” being female in the US but male in Eastern Europe. This profile would be marked “Unknown”.

Malaysia and Puerto Rico have been added to our repository of countries available in the Global dataset of Talent Analyst. The total number of supported countries is now 34!

Note that we're only launching the postings and profiles data for these two countries. Total workforce estimates are not planned for 2024 due to the lack of sufficient data to make reliable estimates with our current methods in these countries.

Checkout the full list of supported countries in this article: Available Countries in Global

The City Overview report is now live and available in US Developer! This comprehensive report is designed to provide deep insights into specific cities, helping you understand key labor market dynamics which can aid in strategic planning and client consultations.

This report is essential for anyone seeking in-depth insights into specific city labor markets offering in-depth insights into local economic conditions that enhance your market understanding and competitive edge.

Learn more about it in our knowledge base article here.

On July 16, 2024, Lightcast released US Datarun 2024.3 to final. With this change:

More information in the data release notes.

On July 9, 2024, Lightcast released US Datarun 2024.3 to beta, including new modeling for IPEDS freshman migration data in odd-numbered years, and incorporation of CDC death data in demographic projections.

More information in the data release notes.

With the release of Datarun 2024.3 in Global, we've added data for New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Chile, Colombia, and the UAE, bringing the total number of supported countries in Talent Analyst up to 32!

Note that Chile, Colombia, and the UAE are only available by the postings and profiles datasets, while New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore are available by postings, profiles, and workforce estimate datasets.

This is the final release of a typical Analyst datarun.

Talent Analyst Global now has its own Job Posting Table!

This report is extremely powerful as it lets our customers slice our global data by all of the typical filters and facets. In the US, it’s one of the most popular reports utilized. Whenever a customer wants more details beyond the JPA report, we usually recommend that they use the JPT. So we’re very excited to get this into Global!

With the release of Datarun 2024.3 in Global, we've added data for New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Chile, Colombia, and the UAE, bringing the total number of supported countries in Talent Analyst up to 32!

Note that Chile, Colombia, and the UAE are only available by the postings and profiles datasets, while New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore are available by postings, profiles, and workforce estimate datasets.

This is the Beta release of a typical Analyst datarun.

In Talent Analyst (Global), the only supported occupation filter is by LOT, but not everyone is familiar with our proprietary taxonomy and this makes it difficult to use and trust. Now the Occupation Snapshot has a “More Details” dropdown where users can learn more about the LOT that they search for. It provides an occupation definition, a sample of common job titles, and a contextual view of the LOT hierarchy. This helps our users understand their search parameters and strengthens their trust in the global data.

NOTE: this is only available for the LOT Occupation and LOT Specialized Occupation levels. The other two higher levels and will be added in the near future.

On June 3, 2024, Lightcast updated Canada datarun 2024.1 to address a bug in the data. The bug had led to incorrect 2023 December business location counts. Correcting that error also influences our employment estimates, primarily in government and agriculture, across the country.

Canada's latest datarun, 2024.1, was released into final on May 28.

There are no major taxonomy or hierarchy updates with this release.

Hong Kong and Argentina have been added to our repository of countries available in the Global dataset of Talent Analyst. The total number of supported countries is now 26!

Note that we're only launching the postings and profiles data for these two countries. Total workforce estimates are not planned for 2024 due to the lack of sufficient data to make reliable estimates with our current methods in these countries.

The Analyst platform now offers Advertised Salary Distribution as a part of the US Job Postings.
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Rather than a single 'median' datapoint, this enables users of tables and maps to better understand the range of salaries being advertised by companies based on selected filters.

Note that in some instances you will notice flat distributions due to small sample sizes or reflecting company behavior.

Canada's latest datarun, 2024.1, was released into beta on May 16, with an expected release to final on May 23.

There are no major taxonomy or hierarchy updates with this release.

Lightcast's US 2024.2 datarun moved to final release, and is the default datarun for the US product.

US 2023.4 is no longer available within the platform.

Lightcast's US 2024.2 datarun includes the latest IPEDS completions data, from 2023, sourced from College Navigator. While Lightcast historically has waited for the provisional release in the fall, incorporation of this preliminary data will enable customers to look at completions nearly 6 months sooner than historically.

Note that this IPEDS data is preliminary. We've observed some institutions from 2022 that do not have data reported in 2023; this may be because or changes to systems, or may be due to being late reporting. As new data becomes available with future releases, it will be incorporated into the tool.

The 2023 update only applies to completions; demographics will not be updated until this fall.

Updated data labels for the following UK SOC which were still displaying SOC 2010 labels.

Additionally performed cleanup of white space that may have caused confusion with exports.

The Analyst platform now supports postings originally seen in French within Canada. As a result of this change, posting counts increase significantly in French-speaking regions such as Canada.

Customers have the option to select only English language postings within postings-based reports to maintain consistency from prior research.

CA Historical Wage Data Expansion: We've added historical wage data for Canada Analyst. Delve into detailed insights on wage trends by occupation.
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To access historical wage data, simply navigate to the Occupation Table within the platform. Utilize the new wage filter option to streamline your search and pinpoint specific wage trends.

Addition of South Africa, and updated workforce data in India

South Africa has been added to our repository of countries available in the Global dataset. The total number of countries for which Lightcast offers workforce estimates, job posting insights, and online profiles insights is now 24!

India numbers reflect a benching of the latest round of data to the latest release of QLFS data (Quarterly Labour Force Survey) at the national / 3-digit occupation level. Their latest releases are on the basis of NCO 2015, which aligns with ISCO-08, rather than NCO 2004 (ISCO 88 basis). The new data released has dramatically higher level of professionals in information and computer technology across the board, which is now reflected in our data.

Developer now supports city-level analysis within the Industry Snapshot & Occupation Snapshot. This update provides insights into employment trends at a granular city level, enhancing our data's precision and usefulness.

Highlights:

This enhancement allows for detailed comparisons between cities, informed economic development strategies, and a deeper understanding of local labor markets. Users can expect more precise data, reflecting the unique economic profiles of cities like Boston, Cambridge, Phoenix, Mesa, and Tempe.

Click here to learn more about the methodology.

Final UK datarun 2024.1 released into the Analyst platform.

Key Update: this release fixed a Military SOC bug, where the 2010 SOC “1171” wasn’t being removed in years before 2021.

Two frequent customer requests were addressed in releases on March 27, 2024.

All postings-based reports, including the Job Postings Table and Map, now allow customers to review a single month of job postings. Previously the system required at least two months of data.

The Job Postings Table now takes into account the selected timeframe in producing results for top occupations, companies, skills, titles, etc. Where previously customers noticed that the list may omit recently growing companies, this logic has been updated to align with customer expectations.

Users will now find the results to be more complete, and have fewer entries with 0 postings populating the report.

Added links between Job Postings Analytics and Higher Education Overview reports, enabling customers to navigate between the reports to gain deeper insights into market demand and competition using the Common Aggregation Hierarchy (CAH).

Additionally, users within Job Postings Analytics can now select an occupation and jump into Higher Education Overview to learn more about the program(s) that feed into that role.

The Program Data Download report previously included Program Name, but not Program CIP Code. This has now been updated to simplify the use of this export for sorting, searching, and analyzing.

On March 22, Lightcast updated the Artificial Intelligence Lightcast Sector to align with the most updated taxonomies, and with the latest research done to support the upcoming Stanford AI Index 2024. (See 2023 report here: Report Link

Users of Lightcast Job Postings Analytics have immediate access to the most up to date understanding of AI demand without needing to create custom saved groups.

Updated UK data released into the Analyst platform, accessible in beta with the datarun selector. Final release expected ~March 27.

Key Update: this release fixed a Military SOC bug, where the 2010 SOC “1171” wasn’t being removed in years before 2021.

Lightcast's log in flow to the Analyst platform (including Analyst, Talent Analyst, Developer, Alumni Pathways, etc.).

All customers will maintain access to the tool. If you have any challenges with the new flow, please contact your Account Manager.

This flow will enable organizations to utilize their own SSO providers (SAML or OIDC protocols) for platform access. Contact your Account Manager for more information.

Lightcast's 2-year skill projections are now available in the Job Posting Table, as well as within Job Posting Analytics reports in the United States. This update enables customers to view projections for skills alongside the many other data elements available within that table, to extend the availability of this data element broadly across the platform."

Did we mention that Lightcast offers data outside of the United States? In the new Talent Analyst, users can now see in their geographic dataset selector that Lightcast offers national datasets (US, UK, CA) and an international dataset (Global).

While the national datasets primarily utilize their own labor taxonomies, the international dataset utilizes our proprietary Lightcast Occupation Taxonomy (LOT), which is what we use to classify roles that are the same across millions of employers, 23 countries, and 11 languages, regardless of job title.

In the global dataset of Talent Analyst, Lightcast estimates the size of a workforce by occupation and metropolitan area globally using the Workforce Estimation Model (WEMo). Initially launched on February 5th, the WEMo was incompatible with aggregate searches (users couldn't search for multiple occupations, higher level occupations, or multiple regions). This is no longer the case!

Now users can run aggregate searches and still receive Lightcast workforce estimates. While there are still occupations where there is not enough information to make any estimate, particularly with blue collar occupations, aggregate searches are now compatible with the model, giving users the ability to search for the right occupation and area levels they need in their research.

Lightcast corrected a bug in the US Staffing Matrix report that was leading to misrepresented occupation-industry counts when industry filters were not selected.

Users of Profile Analytics and Company Talent Profile reports can use prebuilt "Company Groups" to gain faster insights aligned with what is being researched with job postings.

Romania, Sweden, and Denmark are 3 new countries and languages that have been added to the Global dataset. The total number of countries for which Lightcast offers Workforce Estimates, LOT Postings insight from nine languages, and LOT Profiles insight is now 23!

Now when users select a region within the Global reports, the currency is automatically set to that region's local currency. For instance, if you search for Berlin in the Occupation Snapshot, the currency is automatically set to the Euro. This helps speed up the process so that users don't have to remember local currencies when researching and it provides the initial context for the selected labor market.

If multiple regions are selected and those regions have different currencies, Lightcast defaults the currency to the USD. At any point, users have the option to toggle to whatever currency is most applicable to their use-case.

In both US and UK Analyst, Profile Analytics now includes the Lightcast Occupation Taxonomy (LOT). As a result, users can now compare posting and profile data using the most granular occupation taxonomy available. In Job Posting Analytics, users can see skill demand comparisons side-by-side from postings and profiles using the LOT.

Lightcast launched a new design for our Analyst application, bringing our talent and staffing customers a more user-friendly experience with new global capabilities! Learn more details in this article here.

The most updated US data is finalized and the default data set. Learn more here.

The UK Claimant Count data, available in the Economy Overview has been updated through December 2023. This will be updated on a monthly basis moving forward.

The most updated US data is available in beta. Learn more here.

Skill projections provide an estimate of demand for skills 2-years in the future. Updating monthly based on changing trends in the market, these projections help customers gauge what is coming and how the market is adjusting. Learn more here.

Lightcast updated its deduplication algorithm for UK job postings on November 17, 2023. As a result of this change, historic posting counts will decrease approximately 2-4%. More details can be found here.

Additionally, Lightcast improved the alignment of companies to industries, leveraging insights from Gazelle. This will add industry coverage to nearly 10% of US postings.

The Cost of Living Index has been updated to reflect 2023 data.

This release includes the update to 2020 Census Tracts. Learn more here.

Lightcast updated its deduplication algorithm for US job postings on November 3, 2023. As a result of this change, historic posting counts will decrease approximately 1%. Some larger changes will be observed in Registered Nursing and Truck Driving. More details can be found here.

This release includes the update to 2020 Census Tracts. Learn more here.

Users of the US version of Analyst can now research cybersecurity jobs in job postings using Lightcast Sectors. This sector definition, built to align closely with the definition on CyberSeek, enables customers to deepen their regional understanding of cybersecurity demand.

This filter is available in US job postings-based reports.

Groups are now sortable within the add interface. With this update, customers can easily identify groups that they created ("My Groups"), vs those created by their peers ("Org Groups") or Lightcast ("Template Groups").

On October 12, 2023, Canadian datarun 2023.3 was released into final. No changes to methodology or definitions with this release.

Lightcast updated its deduplication algorithm for Canadian job postings on October 6, 2023. As a result of this change, historic posting counts will see an average change of 2-4%. More details can be found here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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:

Learn more in this article.

For details on the datarun, see this article.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

For details on the 2023.2 datarun, see this article.

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.

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.

Salary Boosting Skills have been released in Analyst and Developer!
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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”
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​Where can I find Salary Boosting Skills?
Salary Boosting skills can be found in the DDN Skills section in Occupation Overview and Snapshot reports.

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:

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

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For details on the 2023.2 datarun, see this article.

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.

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.

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.
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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Find out the minimum education level required in job postings.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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!