Understanding the relationships between skills gives us insights into the needs of the labour market and the complexities of understanding skill demands. This report demonstrates how online job postings serve as a valuable source of labour market information that can be used to better understand the relationships between skills and to highlight trends in skill demands.
Using three replicable methodologies—frequency measurement, association through normalized pointwise mutual information, and predictors based on directional relationships—this report explores skill connections based on mentions of skills in job postings. Understanding the connection(s) between two skills gives us insights into the nuances of skill demand and how the demand for a specific skill can change across circumstances.
To demonstrate our approach, the report includes three case studies focusing on the most in-demand skills:
- Teamwork. As this skill is broadly requested across occupations, offering a point of consistency for exploring how relationships between skills shift with different approaches.
- Communication skills. With varied demand across occupations, these provide an example of how context affects the relationships between skills.
- Customer service skills. Primarily associated with sales and service roles, we explore how specialized skills function within their primary occupational group and in other fields.
These case studies illustrate how advanced methodologies can uncover actionable insights into skill demand and relationships to inform workforce planning, career development and policy-making. By sharing how to use data from online job postings to analyze the relationships between skills, the Labour Market Information Council (LMIC) is setting the stage for new research to address the evolving needs of Canada’s labour market.
KEY FINDINGS
In 2023, there were 4,552 unique skills extracted from almost 3.1 million job postings. Notably, the most unique skills appear in a limited number of postings, with only 710 skills appearing in 500 or more.
Social-emotional (or soft) skills account for nine of the 10 most frequently requested skills. Customer service (primarily associated with sales and service roles) is the only occupational skill among the top 10.
Teamwork, communications skills, and customer service are the most frequently requested skill types, appearing in 48%, 39% and 33% of postings, respectively.
Relationships between skills vary across occupations, indicating employers’ different expectations for skills depending on occupation.
Certain skills predict the presence of others in postings. For example, strong writing skills correlate with demand for overall communication skills; being goal-oriented is often requested alongside teamwork skills; and operating a cash register is linked to demands for customer service skills.
Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story @ Connecting Skills: Using online job postings to unravel the demand for skills in the labour market — LMIC-CIMT
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