Key Approaches to Labor Market Assessment:
An Interactive Guide
This is a brief, interactive version of the full publication.
Goal
Workforce Connections has gathered and reviewed existing labor market assessment approaches and related tools from across the workforce and youth landscapes to develop a core suite of tools that can be used to conduct a labor market assessment (LMA).
We aim to share back to the workforce development community the distillation of our knowledge and experience in an accessible, practical, and actionable format. These approaches balance quantitative and qualitative research; focus on the supply, demand, and matching of labor; are participatory; and can be customized to local contexts and priorities.
Who can benefit from using these tools?
These tools provide users with powerful instruments to carry out actionable analysis that gets at the unique nature of labor demand and supply in a given economy, and identifies levers and interventions to improve labor market functioning.
In practice, this is generally done by development funders, implementers and researchers to understand opportunities for youth across an economy. However, these approaches are customizable to various populations of interest or economic sectors by any actors with an interest in promoting improved labor markets, job creation, and increased employment.
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How to use the framework?
We present a user-friendly methodological and customizable framework for conducting a LMA, providing overall guidance, specific tools and approaches, and additional relevant resources. Tools and approaches can be used as needed and/or the full document can be read cover-to-cover or used as a reference.
The framework consists of six modules—drawing from a range of fields, including economics, education, training, psychology, and business.
The first five modules present tools and approaches developed and/or refined under Workforce Connections, and includes references to additional tools. The sixth module illustrates how analytical findings from the previous five might be synthesized and used.