Future skills change is an estimate of the demand for skills 2-years in the future, expressed as a percentage. These values are updated regularly based on market trends. The calculations are based on several data sources including job posting trends, employment growth, changes in how skills are described and internet search patterns.
No projection is foolproof. Because of the nature of labour market data, these estimates should be used as signals rather than definitive forecasts. The underlying model, run by our friends at Lightcast, cleans and normalises data to ensure it is responsive and provides an appropriate level of confidence.
You should know that:
- The model provides a future model of demand for skills, but the entire labour market is, in general, growing. As such, you might see fewer fats decline skills than you might expect.
- The labour market is slow to change, overall. You might see slower growth rates than you would expect for very new, hyped-up skills. This model is designed to avoid overcompensating for skills which are very new, or suddenly very popular.
- Projections can only be made on skills that are tracked. The model is updated regularly to capture new skills which have emerged sufficiently so that they can be properly tagged and tracked. As such, you might not see something that just emerged last week. More likely you'll see projections for skills which have emerged in the last 12 months and have sufficient data to enable a forward projection to be made.
- The projections are based on US labour market data trends. As such the projections are weighted towards the job market there. That said they can still prove instructive to customers operating across multiple geographies as they present a signal on skills change which can be used to refine or challenge thinking.
For ease of interpretation, here are four groups of projected skills change scores:
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Rapidly Growing skills are those increasing in demand significantly faster than the market as a whole
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Growing skills are outpacing the market
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Stable growth represents skills growing in line with the overall market
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Lagging growth may be positive or negative, but is below the market as a whole