In a presentation based on analysis and findings prepared by Kashyap Arora, Anne-Lore Fraikin, and Sukriti Trehan, Kashyap presented a selection of methods for assessing labour demand trends through online job postings, with preliminary results from Vicinity Jobs.

1. Tracking Labor Demand Trends:
An Examination of Online Job Postings
Update and Preliminary results from Vicinity Jobs
Kashyap Arora, Economist
2023.06.03
Anne-Lore Fraikin, Research Lead
Sukriti Trehan, Junior Data Scientist

2. 2
Outline
1. Are online job postings (ojps) a promising source of labour
market information?
• 1.1 Comparing Online Job Postings to Job Vacancy Wage Survey (JVWS)
• 1.2 Understanding Vicinity Jobs (source for collecting OJP data)
• 1.3 How does Vicinity Jobs compare to JVWS?
• 1.4 OJP (Vicinity Jobs) and JVWS at the granular level: provinces and
occupations
2. Online job postings contain data on unmet demand for skills
3. Conclusion and the way forward

3. 3
Online job postings (OJPs) are a promising source
of labour market information
• For efficient matching of workers to jobs, workers need information on where job
opportunities are emerging
• Vacancies measure the unmet demand for labour
• Vacancies data from JVWS provides reliable information but there are certain limitations
 Can online job postings (OJPs) complement JVWS to measure real-time unmet
demand for labour?
 How can we use OJPs to measure unmet demand for labour/labour shortages?

4. 4
Vicinity jobs includes a lot of detailed information on OJPs
• Occupation: Can match the job title to a NOC (4-5 digits) for approx. 85% of OJP
• Location: Can match the OJP to a specific geographical location for 95% of OJP
• Skills: Links job postings to skills requirement, classified into 4 groups and 189
subgroups (Social-Economical, Occupational, Tools and Equipment, and Technologies)
• Skill subgroups: Social-Economical Skills (Cognitive, Interpersonal, Languages);
Occupational skills (Administrative, Analysis and research, Banking and insurance); Tools
and Equipment (Lifting equipment, Building and facilities); and Technologies (Artificial
Intelligence, Audit software, Aviation ground support software)
• Other information available: education and certificates requirement, data source, job
duration (perm/temp/unknown), experience requirement, advertised by (employer,
placement agency), job type (FT/PT), and primary posting language: French, English

5. 5
Three advantages of using online job postings as a complementary
tool to JVWS …
Frequency and
Timeliness
Data are provided daily
and near real-time
Localness
Observations are available
for small locations without
privacy restrictions
Granularity
Skills requirement,
offered wages, employer
information, required
education and
certifications, potential to
track user information

6. 6
How does Vicinity Jobs
compare to JVWS?
6

7. 7
On average, OJPs (Vicinity) are 43,500 higher than the number of
vacancies (JVWS)
Note: JVWS not seasonally adjusted, discontinued in Q2 and Q3 of 2020
Why are the two
series different?
• Flow vs. Stock
• Time lag
• De-duplication
• Public admin jobs
• Not all OJPs can be captured
• People were laid off during
the pandemic, which created
vacancies, but their former
employers hired
(approached) them back after
the pandemic, thereby
eliminating the need for OJP

8. 8
But this average hides very different situations before after
the start of the pandemic
Trend reversal
• Change in employment
composition
• Change in employer
behaviour (more/less
posted online or on
different websites)
• During the pandemic,
people were laid off
temporarily, creating
vacancies but they were
hired again after the
pandemic without need
for OJPs

9. 9
At country level, the correlation between OJP and vacancies is very strong
Pearson correlation coefficient = 0.84

10. 10
… but caution is needed when using OJP data as a proxy for unmet
labour demand
• OJPs and vacancies refer to distinct concepts with their own definitions
 Not all vacancies are posted online
 Each OJP might not represent a current vacancy
 Each OJP may entail one or more vacancies
• Natural language processing algorithm and methods are closed to public
scrutiny
• Deduplication of OJPs on different websites is not perfect
• Not all OJPs can be captured because certain websites use technology to
prevent third-party monitoring (LinkedIn)

11. 11
The correlation is strongest in PEI, SK, AB & ON

12. 12
The correlation is strongest for 7, 6 and 1 and is negative for 2
• Positive and substantive correlation for all occupations except -
Natural and applied sciences and related occupations
(negative correlation)
• Strong correlation for ‘Trades, transport and equipment
operators and related occupations,’ ‘Sales and service
occupations,’ and ‘Business, Finance and Administration
Occupations’

13. 13
OJPs are biased toward certain occupations, jobs and regions
• Occupations/sectors:
 Overrepresents management, Business, finance and administration occupations
 Underrepresents trades and other manual labour professions, small enterprises and
agriculture because more likely to hire through word-of-mouth
• Education:
 Overrepresents occupations that require university education
 Underrepresents jobs requiring a secondary school education or on-the-job training
• Location:
 Underrepresents Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal
 Overrepresents in other metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas

14. 14
On top of a proxy for unmet demand for labour, online job postings
contains data on unmet demand for skills
Top 10 skills in demand in Canada in April 2023
Other options:
• Top 10 skills by province, NOC
• Top 10 skills with highest y-o-y growth rate
• Bottom 10 skills
Skills Number of OJP with skills % of OJP
Teamwork 119592 46.2
Communication skills 94039 36.3
Customer service 82715 32
Flexibility 57214 22
Organizational skills 50659 19.6
Leadership 50377 19.5
Interpersonal skills 47769 18.5
Fast-paced Setting 47483 18.3
Attention to detail 47372 18.3
Decision-Making 43522 16.8
• OJPs may include omitted skills
(employers expect applicants to know
specific job criteria) or skill exaggeration
• Skills information derived reflects only the
online job postings market — meaning
the data may under- or overrepresent
industries, occupations, regions and
firm sizes when compared to actual
vacancies
• Total number of reported skills in Vicinity
Jobs currently exceeds 5000
There are also some limitations in the
measurement of skills

15. 15
Conclusion and the way forward
Observations made by LMIC while working with Vicinity Jobs:
• The NOC decomposition is informative but incomplete because of the amount of missing
information (approx. 15 percent of OJPs cannot be linked to a NOC)
• The correlation plots tells the two series (OJP - Vicinity Jobs and JVWS) are moving in
the same direction
• Looking at shares of OJPs & Vacancies by provinces and occupations is also
interesting to measure the representativness of OJPs compared to vacancies
Advances in data analytics (machine learning, NLP, and web scraping) could enable the use of
online job posting data as a complementary measure of unmet demand for labour and skills.

16. 16
Conclusion and the way forward
Characteristics of online job postings that make them extremely useful :
1. Large volume of data
2. Online job listings offer timely, granular, local, and frequent data that can
complement existing sources
3. Data on skills in demand

17. 17
Questions?

18. 18
Appendix: OJPs slightly underrepresents vacancies in Ontario, Québec,
overrepresents in AB, and stands in balance in BC

19. 19
Cont. The difference in share are more important by NOC than by
provinces

20. 20
lmic-cimt.ca @LMIC_CIMT lmic-cimt