Methodology
Advertised Salary (Job Posting Analytics)
Advertised Salary is found within the Job Posting Analytics and Job Posting Competition reports.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
The BLS is the major source of employment and earnings data in the United States.
Current Population Survey (CPS)
CPS data is the basis for the demographic breakout of data in the Input-Output model.
Demand
Data collected from hundreds of millions of job postings created by employers.
Difficulty to Fill Methodology
Difficulty to fill is an indicator of how difficult this job may be based on how supply and demand compares to other markets of similar size.
Educational Attainment (SOC)
SOC Educational Attainment is a breakdown of the education levels attained by the occupation’s workforce.
Employed
In our data, employed refers to any person who is currently paid as an employee or is self-employed.
Filters
A filter is a set of one or more criteria, used to display only specific rows of data in a table.
Find a Req Data & Match Rating
Note that this information is relevant as of June 2021; the code itself is the main source of truth.
Hardest Job to Fill Nationally
We use the same methodology that we use to calculate supply per posting (as described in Difficulty to Fill) except we compare occupations rather than MSA
Job Counts
Job counts (e.g. 2018 Jobs) are based on the most recent four quarters of data available from QCEW.
Job Title Mapping
A brief overview of how Lightcast formulates our job title data.
Job
A job is any position in which a worker provides labor in exchange for monetary compensation.
Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS)
We use LAUS data to produce unemployment counts and labor force participation data.
Market Tiering Methodology
379 MSAs are divided into three tiers for the purpose of comparative ranking.
Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)
A metropolitan statistical area is an area containing a substantial population nucleus.
Occupation
The term occupation refers to professions or careers in the workforce.
Occupational Employment Statistics (OES)
The Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) program estimates employment and wages for most occupations by industry and sector at the national level.
Occupational Information Network (O*NET)
O*NET provides occupation data such as knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to perform the work, as well as education and training requirements.
Occupational Programs
The programs in the region of study that may train for this occupation.
Posting Trends
This is an indicator of how the number of job postings in the current 90-day period compares to the number of job postings in the previous 90-day period.
Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW)
Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) is a dataset published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Skills
In Lightcast data, skills are competencies at specific tasks or familiarity with specific subjects acquired through education or experience.
Standard Occupation Classification (SOC)
The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system is used by Federal statistical agencies to classify workers into occupational categories.
Supply Methodology
A Brief overview of how SmartReq formulates the supply data on the Sell a Req page.
Timeframe
A timeframe is a period of study, defined by a start and an end year.
Unique Job Postings
Unique Job Postings is the number of deduplicated job vacancy advertisements scraped from over 100,000 websites.
Wage Methodology
A detailed summary of the strategies behind our wage data.
Wages
Occupational wages, which are sometimes referred to as compensation, consist of percentile earnings and average earnings for the occupation.