Today’s Job Market Changes Faster than Ever. Guide Students Through High-Stakes Decisions with Labor Market Data

In the past few years, we’ve witnessed record-high job openings, high-profile labor strikes, record-high inflation, and a global pandemic.

Needless to say, that’s created a turbulent job market. And that turbulence doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. For universities, this market volatility complicates the career counseling they offer students. What may have been true even a year ago likely won’t apply today.

So how do you deliver real-time labor insights to students? You use real-time labor market data.

Keep reading to see how you can support students with relevant job market insights, and which three high-stakes decisions this data can help simplify.

Decision #1: College Major Selections

Within their first year, roughly a quarter of college students change their major. And more than half of college students have changed their major at least once. Regardless of initial plans, students always need guidance and support. They’re constantly learning and being exposed to different perspectives that may shape their academic trajectories.

What’s more: we can already see the consequences that inadequate career planning has on students. Sixty-one percent of college grads would change their majors if they could go back. How can you help prevent this?

One solution is to equip your students, advisors, and career counselors with real-time labor market data. While college shouldn’t solely act as professional training, many students attend college to prepare themselves for a career, which is why it’s a problem that one in three students aren’t sure which major aligns with their intended career path.

Labor market data helps introduce a sense of clarity by highlighting real-time labor insights like…

• Relative demand nationwide for certain roles.
• Hiring trends by region.
• Wages in various industries and professions.

Why not just use a source like the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)? Two big reasons:

• Infrequent updates. The BLS publishes updates to data on a monthly basis (at the most). Some reports are only released once a quarter. This limits the precision your career counselors can offer when students ask about the details of certain professions that might be affiliated with a particular major.

• Limited data samples. The BLS’ frequently-cited JOLTS report (a survey of employers to determine job openings and labor turnover) has been criticized by economists for low response rates. For context, 21,000 firms are surveyed but only about 7,000 respond. The BLS then extrapolates to assess nationwide trends.

It’s risky to rely on limited surveys and extrapolations for labor insights. We pull data directly from active job listings in real time. With us, you don’t get approximations. You get accurate, verifiable job market data from 140,000+ employers.

This is all to say: when advisors and career counselors have access to real-time labor market data, they can make more informed recommendations to the hundreds of students they meet.

The downstream benefits of these recommendations can be significant. Students who visit their career centers – and thus, feel more informed about their future – get more job offers than students who don’t. That demonstrable success doesn’t just help the university market itself to prospective students; it also enhances the educational experience (which may translate to graduates’ willingness to donate).

Decision #2: Job and Internship Applications

Whether students are graduating or simply looking for something to do over their summer break, internships and jobs are on their radar. This is a common situation where advisors and career counselors can lend expertise. But, again, in a turbulent labor market, year-old insights are outdated. Students and advisors need up-to-date information.

For example, let’s say you’re an academic advisor. A graduating student meets with you to learn what salary they might earn as a software engineer in a big city.

Rather than poring over outdated salary insights from unverified sources, you can go to your labor market data provider’s platform and quickly see what an early-career software engineer might make in the five largest US cities (Figure 1).

Figure 1: For big city-bound early-career software engineers, New York, NY offers the highest salary.

NOTE: in these cases, it might be helpful to use the 25th percentile averages to approximate the wages that a low / no-experience college graduate might earn.

Interestingly, you find that large cities don’t necessarily equate to larger salaries for software engineers. (The nationwide average is largely in line with averages in large cities.) From here, you may coach the student to consider these cities’ costs of living to determine where an entry-level salary might go furthest.

After some quick searching, you find that Houston is the most affordable to live in, followed closely by Philadelphia and Chicago. With this information in mind, the student can more confidently and realistically plan their future.

Decision #3: Post-Graduation Living Arrangements

While many college graduates stay in the same area as their college (more than 43 percent), plenty of others look beyond their college’s metro market for job opportunities. Salary is an important factor in these decisions, but, once again, so is cost of living.

With labor market data, university advisors can meet with soon-to-be-graduates and share what living in another area might look like for each particular student.

Let’s say you’re a career counselor advising two students who want to move to Los Angeles, CA. Student A is graduating with a degree in electrical engineering. Student B is graduating with a degree in marketing. Both students intend to pursue the fields they studied. The 25th percentile salary for an electrical engineer in Los Angeles, CA is $112,507. The 25th percentile salary for a marketing associate in Los Angeles, CA is $66,997 (Figure 2).

Figure 2: There’s a 51 percent difference between what early-career electrical engineers and marketing associates make in Los Angeles, CA.

That’s a pretty steep divide. It doesn’t mean both students couldn’t move to Los Angeles, but when the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles is $2,250, Student B would likely need to find roommates.

These post-grad planning conversations are an essential piece of career counseling. And when you have real-time labor data at your disposal, you can feel more certain that your labor insights are accurate and beneficial.

Deliver Superior Career Counseling with Real-Time Job Market Insights

The job market will always change. That’s not just attributable to macroeconomic conditions. New breakthroughs, like the advent of GenAI, can completely alter which jobs companies advertise and which skills candidates need.

It’s incumbent on universities to track these changes and relay them to students.

When the hiring market can change in a matter of days, you can’t rely on data that’s months or even years old. You and your students need labor insights that reflect the reality you’re experiencing.

That’s what real-time labor market data can do.

Want to see how labor market data can help you deliver more value to your students? Book a demo!