Equity Pathways is a key report in Diversity Insights, a tool rooted in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), empowering users to grasp regional demographics, pinpoint engagement opportunities to bolster DEI efforts, discern optimal occupations for transitioning to foster diverse talent pools, and ultimately enhance the fairness of talent pipelines.

To run an Equity Pathways report, select your desired region which can include the entire United States, a single state, or an MSA, along with the focus occupation. For this example we've selected the Atlanta MSA and Accountants and Auditors as the focus occupation.

Once you run the report, you'll see the option to add a Comparison Occupation in the filters on the left side of the report.

The focus occupation is occupation that you are looking to transition workers out of, so this report is most useful for the occupations with an oversupply of workers and undersupply of jobs. The comparison occupation is the occupation you are looking to move workers into. This selection is not required, but additional details are displayed in the report when you do. I'll highlight these items at the bottom of the article.

The overview charts highlight a few key numbers for the focus occupation. First, you can see the racial diversity percentage which measures the presence of talent in an occupation that does not identify as white. This number is compared to other MSAs to understand if the diversity is distributed evenly. In this scenario, the racial diversity for Accountants and Auditors is unevenly distributed in the Atlanta MSA.

Next, you'll see the Median Advertised Salary for the focus occupation highlighting is the cost for talent in your region is lower or higher than the national median salary. In Atlanta, it is a little bit more expensive than the national median to hire an Accountant or Auditor.

Finally, you will see the ratio of available workers compared to the number of job openings. This shows that Atlanta has 5 available workers for every two job openings while the national comparison is 5:4. This is another metric to understand the oversupply of workers.

Next-Step Jobs are jobs that workers can transition into from the focus occupation.

Feeder Jobs are those roles from which workers transition into the focus occupation

Similar to the Diversity Insights Occupation Breakdown, the Population Supply by Demographic highlights how the focus occupation compares to the other occupations in the occupation group.

This table provides some additional context for these occupations. The number of Transitional Skills counts how many specialized skills each occupation has for individuals looking to transition into it. The Relevance shows a calculation based on how closely aligned the skills are between the focus occupation and the listed occupation. The supply and demand ratio is carried over from the Supply & Demand Regional Scan report to identify which occupations are balance, and which are not. And finally, the Mean Salary Difference calculates the difference in mean salary between the focus occupation and the listed occupation.

In our example for Accountants and Auditors, the two occupations that stand out most in this table are Financial Specialists, All Other and Management Analysts because both have an oversupply of jobs with an undersupply of workers and both would represent a pay increase for individuals transitioning between the occupations.

When you add a comparison occupation to the Equity Pathways report, you'll see the graphs and charts update to help you understand the potential impact from moving one group of workers from the Focus Occupation to the Comparison Occupation. In this example I'm looking at Accountants and Auditors as the Focus Occupation and Software Developers as the Comparison Occupation for the Atlanta MSA.

First, you'll see an impact to the percent of diversity change to the Comparison Occupation, so in this scenario moving Accountant and Auditors into Software Development would improve the diversity by 14%

Second, you see a calculation to know how the wages for the transitioning workers would be impacted. A salary increase of $43,118 would be meaningful enough for workers to go through the reskilling and training.

Last, you can see the Comparison Occupation's worker surplus or shortage. Not only is Atlanta short almost 7,000 Software Developers, but the demand is increasing.

Related to the diversity impact percentage at the top, the next chart breaks down the demographics between the two occupations.

When you highlight over a bar, you'll see the demographic details. Because Accountants and Auditors have a 61% female workforce, and a higher percentage of Black or African American workers that is why transitioning a group of workers will improve the diversity in Software Developers.

The next section compares the skills between the two occupations by what skills are specialized for the Focus Occupation, and which skills are common to both.

For this transition, you can see that there is a very small overlap between the specialized skills for Accountants and Auditors and Software Developers. If you were able to find an organization that needs software developers to build accounting software, that is one way their existing knowledge might be leveraged.

The common skills helps visualize how communication, problem solving, and leadership are needed in both occupations.

Transitional skills highlights the skill gaps between the two occupations and ranks how important each gap is. The Importance Score uses the weighted average of the size of the gap in skill similarity between the focus and comparison occupations while factoring in the importance of those skills to the salary estimation. An Importance Score of 5 indicates the skill as most important, while a score of 1 indicates the skill as least important. When creating any upskilling program for this transition, you'll want to ensure the most important gaps are covered well to give the individuals the highest likelihood of success in their new career.

The last section highlights the top qualifications needed for the Comparison Occupation according to the recent job postings.