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South Dakota e-Labor Bulletin

July 2017

Moving beyond the labor market barometer

Several years ago private sector companies developed systems to collect online job postings by "spidering" the listings from multiple sources on the internet and organizing them into standardized data categories. These entities built tools for analyzing current labor market trends on hiring and employer demand. Users include state and local governments, workforce boards, educational institutions, economic development entities and research organizations. All these organizations use "real-time" labor market information tools to better understand state, regional and local labor market conditions.

The Labor Market Information Center (LMIC) developed the Labor Market Barometer, first published in June 2013, to provide a real-time graphical look at the South Dakota labor market. It has been published each month since, updated with the release of statewide labor market data. (note: this image is no longer available)

The Labor Market Barometer compares the level of unemployed, the number of job openings posted on SDWORKS (South Dakota’s online jobs database), and the number of newly hired workers (new hires) using the most current data available. The graph tracks the data on a monthly basis, reflecting the dynamic nature of the labor market and the level of "churning" related to individuals looking for work and employers who are hiring.

Since we now have a virtual labor market data system (one of the tools mentioned above that utilizes spidering technology for real-time labor market data), the Labor Market Barometer will no longer be published as a separate web page. However, for our users' convenience, links are provided below for easy access to each of the data sets which were included in the barometer:

Job Openings

Unemployed

New hires (Scroll down to the last row of the first table of data.)

If you have questions about any of these data sets or need assistance accesing the data, please contact us for assistance.