On April 19th 2024, Lightcast will be enhancing accuracy in the way we code to the O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy.

What should clients expect?

All historic postings data will be better coded using the new system, so data will be consistent for time series analysis. Clients may want to rerun analysis as we are expecting to see shifts across occupations.

Why are we doing this?

The existing occupation classifier works well, with over 80% accuracy – but, there is room for improvement. Currently, when errors are found, it can take a while to fix them. Our new classifier is quicker, even more accurate and easier to update with fixes or improvements.

We are making this change to bring our customers the best possible coding which will be derived from our flagship Lightcast Occupation Taxonomy coding that boasts close to 90% accuracy levels. The updated coding has more granularity and greater precision, distinguishing between different specialties and encoding the occupation accordingly - For instance coding fewer postings to “Not Elsewhere Classified” O*NET codes.

What are the changes?

We will be updating this article to include expected changes at the “Occupation Major Group” level. Please contact [email protected] for any further details relating to individual occupations.

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Lightcast will be updating its job postings pipeline and deduplication algorithm for the US job postings on November 3rd 2023. The Conference Board and Lightcast will update the HWOL time series products so that they are consistent with the enhanced deduplication process. As a result of this change, historic posting counts will see an average change of 1-3 percent for HWOL data.

In order to ensure consistency with the new deduplication process, we will conduct a historical restatement on the HWOL Publication (and seasonally adjusted postings data) and HWOL Index data along with reproducing all of the monthly data files. This ensures that your teams can maintain an enhanced, accurate and consistent time series product. We are here to assist and provide any additional information.

A more detailed outline of the deduplication update can be found here https://kb.lightcast.io/en/articles/8317645-expected-posting-count-changes

Lightcast and The Conference Board will be revising the following:

With the 2023.3 update data run, Lightcast released an updated industry classification to the NAICS 2022 taxonomy. This does not change the total job count for a region or any reports related to occupation. This may impact reports run in Developer when analyzing industry.

With the May 2023 update data run, the HWOL Publication Series was incorporated with a restatement from 2015 to the present. The restatement resulted from a Lightcast coding error within the new data sets definition of "active jobs". Although active job counts were impacted, "unique job" counts remained constant. The active jobs definition was also updated, as well as all HWOL data on Developer.

With the April 2023 update data run, Lightcast experienced a technical error with the deduplication of the new data. This resulted in an update to remove duplicate job postings in HWOL data. HWOL data files were not affected by the technical errors.

With the March 2023 HWOL Publication Series, the historical HWOL Data Series was revised to new and enhanced data. This revision included updating SOC 2010 to SOC 2021 occupation taxonomy, NAICS industry, and geography coding. The revised data files were also updated to a new SFTP file delivery, with data also updated to Developer. In addition to the new enhanced data, Lightcast increased cybersecurity for the data.

On March 15, 2023, Lightcast experienced a cybersecurity attack. The cyberattack impacted the processing center for the global job posting data. This resulted in all job posting data to be reprocessed and delivered via updated and secured data delivery systems. The US job posting data for HWOL in Developer was updated and set to run by April 18.

In February 2023, HWOL began the migration from Labor Insight to Developer to ensure a transition period.