Labour Market Information

We have to include, on our website, information on the labour market (LMI) both locally and nationally.  A key component of our careers provision is providing information to students on how to look at labour market information, interpret the data and recognise professions, industries and jobs which are both in demand or in decline.  We teach, within our Career’s programme, LMI, and analyse entry routes, salaries, skills and qualifications needed for a variety of roles, jobs and careers.         

LMI- Labour Market Information – for Cambridge and Peterborough can be found HERE and for the national trends click on Meridian Career Pathways website HERE

Labour Market Information (LMI) is a useful tool to help research future jobs in the local area, understand the skills needed for certain roles and the demand for future employment. It is important our students leave here with a good understanding of this.

• https://www.lmiforall.org.uk/ – Here you can explore the labour market, look at current salaries for different sectors and see the predicted growth rate using the Careerometer.
• https://www.livingwage.org.uk/accredited-living-wage-employers – this site looks at the national minimum wage aswel as employers who pay the ‘real minimum wage’ based on the cost of living.
• https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket– This site covers labour market information. It looks at employment, unemployment, types of work, and working patterns.
• Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Labour market information site. Here you can use the Careersometer and Skillsometer to look at job role information For Learners (cambspeterboroughlmi.co.uk)

Key Terminology

1. Cv or Curriculum Vitae. A CV is a document that you use to communicate your skills, qualifications and experiences to potential employers. The term Curriculum vitae is latin and means ‘the course of my life’
2. Employment. A relationship between two parties (an employer and an employee. In it the employee agrees to give up their time to do something the employer wants done, in exchange for money. If someone wants to work but cannot find a job they become unemployed. However, if you are able to earn money without an employer, for example selling services direct to customers, then you are self-employed.
3. Labour market. The world of work can be thought of as a market place in which some people (employers) are buying and others (employees) are selling their time and effort (Labour)
4. Occupation. An occupation describes a type of job or a series of closely related jobs. It describes what someone does but doesn’t describe where someone works (see sector below). So computer programmer is an occupation but the information technology (IT) industry is the sector.
5. Recruitment. The process of finding employees to fill vacant job opportunities.
6. Salary. A regular payment to someone for the work that they do. It is usually described in job adverts as an annual figure. However, the annual figure will normally be described as a gross figure (the whole amount paid by the employer) rather than as a net figure (the amount the employee actually takes home after they have paid all deductions, such as tax, National insurance, pensions and other deductions)
7. Sector. The type of organisation that you work for. It doesn’t describe the jobs that individual workers do. So, a university is in the education sector, but it will employ accountants, cleaners, managers, security guards as well as educators.
8. STEM. The term STEM describes qualifications and jobs that relate to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
9. Trends. Economists look at what’s has happened in the past to make a guess what might happen in the future. For example, they might look at how many agriculture workers are about to retire and how many are being trained to suggest whether there is going to be a demand for agriculture workers in the future. Such information is based on careful analysis, but is best seen as an informed guess rather than a fact. This information ties in with LMI.
10. Work. This term describes anything an individual does which takes their time and energy. It is different from employment, as we are not always paid for work. So work can include volunteer work and work that people might do towards a future career, eg an aspiring artist who paints a picture.