United States of America

This paper finds that big data on vacancies and applications to an online job board can be a promising data source for studying skills dynamics, especially in countries where alternative sources are scarce. To show this, we develop a skills taxonomy, assess the characteristics of such online data, and employ natural language processing and machine-learning techniques. The empirical implementation uses data from the Uruguayan job board BuscoJobs, but can be replicated with similar data from other countries.

This joint ILO-UNESCO report provides a global, high-level overview of how digitalization is affecting TVET and skills systems. It draws on consultations with key stakeholders in a set of countries and international organizations to provide insights into the nature and scope of digitalisation and how it is likely to affect the management, delivery, assessment and certification of technical and vocational education and training. The study draws on developments in Brazil, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, New Zealand, Slovenia, Turkey and the United States.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) added four questions to the May 2017 Contingent Worker Supplement. These questions were designed to measure an emerging type of work—electronically mediated work, defined as short jobs or tasks that workers find through websites or mobile apps that both connect them with customers and arrange payment for the tasks. After extensive review, BLS determined that these questions did not work as intended and had a large number of incorrect 'yes' answers. To eliminate these false positives, BLS manually recoded the data using verbatim responses available only on the confidential microdata file. Using these recoded data, BLS estimates that electronically mediated workers accounted for 1.0 percent of total employment in May 2017. In the interest of transparency, BLS is releasing both the collected data and the recoded data.

This article describes the process of developing the four questions and summarizes the evaluation of the data, the recoding of the data, estimates of electronically mediated workers, and lessons learned.

This report studies the career advancement prospects of people entering middle-skill jobs through the unprecedented analysis of nearly 4 million resumes of middle-skill jobseekers. It highlights the types of occupations that offer the strongest opportunities for financial stability and true economic advancement.