New in Analyst: A Whole New Perspective on Relevant Skills

Emsi is pleased to announce the rollout of new, enhanced skills data in Analyst and Developer. Historically, Job Posting Analytics and Program Market Demand reports have displayed the skills most frequently requested in employer job postings, providing a useful snapshot of the demand for those skills in the labor market. But demand is only half the equation.

That’s why we’re introducing a side-by-side comparison of both demand and supply of top skills, where supply is measured by the frequency of worker profiles listing that skill—an exciting new perspective on the real skills present in today’s workforce. By bringing the supply and demand of skills together, this update enables users to address skills and curriculum-related questions better than ever.

Some highlights about the new functionality:

• The skills frequency in workforce profiles is pulled from over 106 million unique employee profiles—the same robust data set underlying Emsi’s Alumni Insight tool.

• Results are automatically filtered to include only profiles that were updated within the past three years, keeping your results relevant and up-to-date.

• Update applies to all Analyst and Developer users; a subscription to Alumni Insight is not required.

Let’s look at some examples of this new data. Here are top skills for machinist jobs in the Detroit MSA:

We can see right away that the frequency of machining job postings asking for skill with a lathe (second from top) is about 20 percentage points greater than the frequency of workforce profiles listing that skill. This could indicate a need in the market for more programs teaching that skill. Or it could mean that machinists in the Detroit area who already have that skill ought to promote it on their résumés and job profiles so they can grab the attention of employers. Of course, more analysis is needed, but comparing the supply and demand of these skills provides a great jumping-off point and gives direction for further research.

In addition to the bar chart, skills frequency data is also displayed in a table for more precise comparisons. For example, here is the top hard skills table based on a search of data scientist job postings in the Denver MSA:

Here, we see that the Python programming language is listed in 45% of worker profiles, but is requested in only 18% of data scientist job postings in this region. This could indicate that employers looking for data scientists in Denver do not value Python as much as they once did, or at least they do not consider it a necessary pre-requisite for the positions they have open.

To a job seeker, this could signal that they should seek to differentiate themselves in other areas, perhaps by highlighting experience with the Hadoop framework (a skill with a much higher frequency in postings than in profiles).

As with the first example, this question could be explored further, but it illustrates a few of the ways we hope this new data improves your experience in Analyst and Developer and empowers you with new insight into the labor market.

If you have questions about these updates or how to best use Emsi data, please contact Matthew Hyndman.