A frequent claim from labour market information users (e.g., educational and training providers) is the lack of disaggregated data to identify the current requirements of the labour demand. This project, conducted by Dr Jeisson Cardenas-Rubio, pilots and assesses whether information from job portals can be classified according to the relatively new 6- digit UK Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) developed by the ONS. It thus opens new research avenues in assessing the possibility of organising and coding vacancy data and understanding the dynamics of the labour market at a more disaggregated level.

The UK Prime Minister has proclaimed a Green Industrial Revolution. This revolution will ‘build green jobs and industries of the future’ the Prime Minister stated. The big question is whether there is employer demand for the jobs that will support this revolution.

Examining new data on vacancies for green jobs suggests that demand is not growing and that further stimuli and support will be needed to deliver this revolution.

Sally-Anne Barnes, Jeisson Cárdenas-Rubio, Jenny Bimrose and Derek Bosworth have been presenting on recent work to collect UK vacancy data.

As part of extending the data available in LMI for All, IER are currently piloting a web scraping technique to collect UK vacancy data. LMI for All brings together different sources of labour market data, but a complete and reliable vacancy dataset has been difficult to find. A web scraping method is currently being used to create a vacancy dataset mapped to the UK occupational classification system.

The team have presented to the Department for Education and the Skills Advisory panels this month, whilst Jeisson will be presenting more on the methodology at the upcoming Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence and BEIS virtual workshop on online job vacancy data in December.

New labour market data released by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that the small rise in unemployment recorded in May has held. Unemployment has not yet risen because of the furloughing scheme. However, the collapse in job vacancies is being taken as a marker of the massive unemployment to come. The aggregate vacancy data masks some significant variations by occupation. Experimental data analysis by the Warwick Institute for Employment Research (IER) reveals falling and increasing demand for different jobs in the UK labour market.

IER is seeking to appoint two outstanding researchers to contribute to developing and enhancing its reputation as an internationally leading, multi-disciplinary research-only institute. We intend to make two appointments from across the Research Fellow, Senior Research Fellow and Principal Research Fellow levels. Candidates with interests in any of the Institute’s diverse fields of research are encouraged to apply, although at least one of the appointments will be in the area of vocational education and training (VET), and at least one of the appointments will have strong quantitative research skills.

Application deadline 8 January 2017, and interviews will be held on 2 February 2017