Mobility Pathways for Workers and Employers – A tool

Workers, firms, and policymakers each have a role in bolstering economic mobility. Our Mobility Pathways tool can help all of these groups harness relevant data to expand opportunities for mobility and growth.

Users can compare jobs by wage level, current demand (estimated from real-time job postings), and “mobility index” ranking (a new indicator we constructed that ranks occupations based on whether their workers typically transition into higher-paying jobs).

This tool provides practical, tailored analysis to help build more resilient economies and help workers access jobs that provide economic mobility.

Access Mobility Pathways

The Mobility Pathways tool is designed with a few key “use cases” in mind:

1. Workers (and organizations supporting them) who want to explore realistic pathways to higher-paying jobs.

Navigating today’s labor market is overwhelming and high-stakes—the tool highlights realistic upward pathways from any given job. If you’re a retail salesperson, it shows the most common jobs that people in retail typically transition to, and how those potential transitions compare to your current job. You’ll learn that retail workers most commonly transition to retail supervisors or cashiers, but the most promising potential transitions are to jobs as stock clerks or material movers—which each have higher median wages, higher mobility rankings, and are in higher demand than retail sales jobs.

2. Businesses that want to fill staffing needs while supporting upward mobility.

Our tool can help human resource managers explore “source” occupations for any job vacancy—including less intuitive linkages from lower-wage occupations that are still likely to succeed in the role, perhaps with targeted training or upskilling. If you’re a growing tech company looking for computer analysts, the tool shows which occupations have historically transitioned into computer analyst jobs and the current demand for those source occupations. You’ll learn that office machine repairers, with some upskilling, might be a great fit—while offering your organization the chance to provide real career mobility to workers in a lower-wage, lower-demand occupation.

3. Policymakers who want real-time, actionable data on their labor market.

State and city governments need a solid understanding of local employment to facilitate economic growth and upward mobility. During the current recession, with demand surging for a narrow set of occupations as many industries struggle, the tool can help policymakers facilitate strategic employee sharing—in which workers at slumping companies are temporarily matched with firms experiencing spikes in demand. Looking to the future, the tool can help tailor economic development plans, build talent pipelines to attract and retain firms, and better target upskilling, reskilling, and workforce development programs.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story @ Introducing the Mobility Pathways tool for workers, employers, and policymakers