We’re addressing the need to understand how job seekers enter the STW, maintain relevance, and advance by:
- Conducting a data discovery process to find and assess data sources that could inform our understanding of the STW and address the data deficits; and
- Analyzing the Adult Training and Education Survey to find out what could be learned about the STW.
We conducted a data discovery search to access the availability of non-survey data sources (e.g., administrative data from federal, state, and local governments, for profits, and not-for-profits) with the potential to fill in some of the STW data gaps. The results of our data discovery process are provided in the Skilled Workforce Data Discovery Dashboard. Our search resulted in our purchase of Burning Glass Technologies (BGT) job-ad and resume data, which includes data on the skills and nondegree credentials demanded by employers and the pathways of job seekers currently in STW jobs.
Without federal guidance on the use of secondary data, our researchers did an extensive review of the academic literature on the use of the BGT job-ads data. The literature review highlights issues researchers found in using the data and benchmarking results as well as our own data profiling and benchmarking. This work is described in the technical report, Review of Burning Glass Technologies Job-ad Data (Lancaster et al. 2019). Prior to our using the BGT job-ads data in our research, we used the Biocomplexity Institute’s data profiling framework and exploratory data analyses to the assess fitness-for-use of the BGT job-ad data and conduct own benchmarking against two federal surveys. The results of our data profiling and benchmarking are provided in the BGT Profiling and Benchmarking Dashboard.
The Adult Training and Education Survey (2016) is a federal survey directed at adults ages 16 to 65 that is focused on nondegree credentials and work experience programs.Our paper analyzes the responses from those ATES respondents whose education level is less than a Bachelor’s degree, have a post-secondary nondegree credential, and are using it in their current STW job. The results are discussed in the paper, What the Adult Training and Education Survey Tells Us About the Skilled Technical Workforce (Lancaster, 2020).
Figures

The results of our data discovery are provided in Skilled Workforce Data Discovery Dashboard. The dashboard includes:
- Data Sources with a data table with information about each data source
- Display Chart describing various categorical variables from the data sources table
- Data Dictionary with definitions of all variables included in the data sources table
Division Director
Distinguished Professor in Biocomplexity, Biocomplexity Institute
Professor of Public Health Sciences, School of Medicine