MIAMI—Too often, labor data are perceived as the grounds of researcher and economists who create snazzy PowerPoint charts for academic and policy purposes. But the data can also profoundly affect the lives of people who turn to such information to make career and education decisions.

 

That's why accurate labor market data is “extraordinarily important,” said John Dorrer, program director at Jobs for the Future (JFF). “If you get it wrong, you impose a high penalty on individuals,” who might end up with a huge debt load and limited career prospects.

 

Traditional labor market information “does a good job looking in the rear view mirror,” but does not do so well projecting future trends, Dorrer told the audience at a panel discussion during the American Association of Community Colleges' Workforce Development Institute last week.

JFF's Credentials That Work initiative, which is getting under way, aims to help community colleges address that gap by using real-time labor market information (LMI) derived from job postings and resumes in public and private online labor exchanges to determine “what’s happening in the here and now,” Dorrer said.

 

Colleges can then use the data to analyze which industries in their area have the most job openings, who companies are hiring, what skills and types of degrees they have, how much employees can earn and more.

JFF formed a network of community colleges to evaluate various technologies for analyzing LMI, including the Kentucky Community and Technical College System and 10 community colleges in California, Kentucky, Illinois, New York, Maine and Texas.

 

One of them is Cabrillo College (CC) in California, where Rock Pfotenbauer, dean of instruction, career education, and economic development, is using more accurate LMI data to adjust its programs and courses. For example, he found the college was producing too many medical assistants, and only 40 percent of graduates were getting jobs in the field.

 

CC put together a matrix showing how its programs stacked up in terms of employability of graduates, he said. Programs that scored the lowest, such as engineering technology, are paying more attention to job placement and are now teaching students the same software used by most local employers.

 

Pfotenbauer, who also heads the Bay Area Community College Consortium, said it doesn’t make sense for each college to carry out these time-consuming analyses separately.

 

“We need to leverage our scale and pool our resources to do this more effectively,” he said.

 

 

The Credentials That Work model uses technology from a company called Burning Glass to find which companies are hiring in a state, how many job openings employers have and which skills will be in greatest demand. Other LMI tools include the Conference Board’s Help Wanted Online program, which compares data on internet job postings to unemployment data, and the Supply & Demand Portal from Career Builder, based on data from resumes on the Career Builder site, which shows how many active job seekers there are for every position.

 

Better analysis of labor data can also help colleges discover and respond to industry trends, such as the manufacturing comeback, as well as increase transparency, carry out strategic planning and institutional alignment, and provide better guidance to students and parents.

 

“We need more data to help us understand educational attainment and earnings," Dorrer said. "We need to do a better job helping students make informed choices."

 
The jobs are there, but they require a higher level of skills, and students often don't know what those skills are or how to attain them, added Dorrer, noting that more than half of employees are having difficultly filling mission-critical positions.

 

“Large numbers of people are literally stranded because they have the wrong skills,” he said.