Be Curious: Labour Market Information (LMI)
Labour Market Information (LMI) helps students and new graduates navigate the world of work and potential career pathways. LMI provides vast data and information on job growth, economic climates, skills needed, wages, labour supply and demand. This information can be utilized for career development and job searching.
Employers often inform post-secondary career counsellors that they are concerned about candidates’ lack of knowledge about the industry they are applying to. Students not only need to research the job and company but also understand the issues the sector is experiencing, the drivers of the sector, and the future of the sector. This information is invaluable when writing a cover letter and preparing for interviews — especially for the question, “What is your future career plan?” Finding relevant and reliable LMI when researching careers and applying for jobs is crucial. Students can use the following key sites to build their LMI knowledge. Ideally, students will begin this type of research long before graduation to assist with academic and career decisions. Students can use these sites to determine where the jobs are, the skills and credentials needed, the projected growth of an industry — and even the geographical locations of career choices.
Where to Get Information
- Government of Canada Job Bank LMI provides information on specific occupations and snapshots of current labour market conditions by location.
- Labour Market Information Council (LMIC). This resource reflects the scope of the Canadian labour market. For students and new graduates, it provides access to career decision-making data.
- LMIC Canadian Job Trends Dashboard The Canadian Job Trends Dashboard allows users to explore labour market information based on trends in job postings across Canada.
- LinkedIn contains lots of information on the labour market. LinkedIn shows over 17 million Canadian users, with over 30 million global companies on the platform. Recently, LMIC partnered with LinkedIn to summarize over 400,000 paid job vacancies. Their summarized data provides the top required skills and job titles across ten major cities. The results showed that common skill groups such as business management, leadership, and oral communication were required skills for all students and new graduates.
Attribution
Adapted from “2. Labour Market Information” from University to Career by Larry Iles is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
