Overview
What is changing?
Lightcast will be transitioning the Australia & New Zealand postings data to our improved infrastructure to power job postings services including:
Lightcast Snowflake Postings
Lightcast Data Feed Postings
Lightcast Job Postings API
Lightcast Web apps
Timeline: When will this change take place?
For data services this change is planned for August 26, 2024.
For Web apps services the change is planned for June, a firm date will be updated here shortly.
What are the benefits of this change?
Lightcast's improved infrastructure has the following benefits:
Harmonized deduplication process across all Lightcast Global postings.
Company name normalization.
Improved Skills coding.
Improved Salary coding.
Improved coding of Lightcast Occupations Taxonomy, with coding to Specialist Occupation level.
Access to Lightcast Titles.
Impact
What will this change mean for me?
Overall top line volumes of data will change. This is the result of more accurate and robust reporting on the number of postings in the economy overall and from a given company.
Total postings counts will show changes across postings history compared to prior to the change.
For Australia specific estimated national annual changes are as follows for new postings:
Year | Diff |
2018 | -2.3% |
2019 | -2% |
2020 | -6.2% |
2021 | -9.4% |
2022 | -10.5% |
2023 | -3.1% |
For New Zealand specific estimated national annual changes are as follows for new posting:
Year | Diff |
2018 | -0.9% |
2019 | -1.2% |
2020 | -2.5% |
2021 | -2.2% |
2022 | -5.9% |
2023 | 2.9% |
What does this mean for my analysis?
Overall posting counts have shifted, but the trends remain constant. This is primarily a technical change in processing to create a better on-going experience with Lightcast job postings.
Consistent trends: Looking at the change from a ranking/distribution standpoint we see the same/similar rankings in occupations, clean titles and all other data points as we did previously.
More noticeable changes potential in specific analyses: In more targeted analyses, especially around specific data elements, customers may see more significant shifts. We have seen a proportional change in all other data elements, but customers may choose to rerun some analysis due to this. This is most important in those cases where specific volume of postings matter more than trends and relative volume measures more frequently utilized.
Technical Notes
Why are you changing the deduplication process?
Lightcast has invested in better postings classification. With this, we have taken steps to use these improvements as part of our deduplication process which has largely remained untouched since inception.
What are you changing in the deduplication process?
We are changing one item:
The input for Company Name. In the new deduplication we will use our most up to date company classifier to identify and normalize the company name.
Why am I seeing decreased numbers?
As we are better normalizing company names, we are able to use this to be able to better match and find duplicate postings within each company.
In 2023 New Zealand data experiences a slight increase as we see more granularity in company names for example New Zealand Government have chosen to advertise under the various Government Department names.
What is your deduplication process?
The deduplication process can be found here.
I am running specific analysis, what does this change mean for me?
Customers focusing on:
Skills: Lightcast uses a different taxonomy and classification/coding to Burning Glass Technologies. This taxonomy is more comprehensive and has been enhanced. Customers will find that the number of skills per posting have increased, this is due to a better capture of skills. Learn about Lightcast skills here: Lightcast Skills.
Lightcast Occupations Taxonomy: Lightcast has upgraded its LOT to a new taxonomy version and has added a number of Occupations as well as provided the use of Specialist Occupations. The different taxonomy has a new classification/coding to Burning Glass Technologies. The classification uses a machine learning model along with business rules to provide more accurate coding of occupations. Learn about LOT occupations here: LOT Occupations.
Companies: Lightcast uses a different taxonomy and classification/coding to Burning Glass Technologies. Lightcast consolidates companies more readily than Burning Glass Technologies products, customers will see some differences. Learn about Lightcast companies here: Lightcast Companies.
Salary: Lightcast uses a different classification/coding to Burning Glass Technologies. Burning Glass Technologies used business rules to code salaries within the job posting, as well as inferring salaries via a proprietary methodology. Lightcast codes advertised salary from job body text only, it excludes ‘estimated salary’ data that maybe found on some job boards.
Lightcast Titles: Lightcast uses a different taxonomy and classification/coding to Burning Glass Technologies. Lightcast consolidates titles more readily than Burning Glass Technologies products. Learn about Lightcast Titles here: Lightcast TItles.
The full methodology of job postings analytics can be found here.