LMI for All is an online data portal, developed by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, which brings together existing national sources of high quality labour market information (LMI) that can inform people’s choices about their careers. After successfully completing its pilot stage, LMI for All has been given full project status.
LMI for All makes data freely accessible via a single access point. In this form, the data wouldn’t make much sense to end-users; the intention is for software developers to extract the labour market data, and use it to create informative and engaging apps or websites.
At heart this is an open data project, which supports the wider government agenda to encourage use and re-use of government data sets. It allows creative, talented developers to access data and gives them the opportunity to produce useful, visually striking apps, bringing the data to life for varying audiences, including individuals, careers practitioners, employers and policy makers.
A consortium led by the Institute of Employment Research at the University of Warwick, including Pontydysgu and Raycom, was been commissioned by UKCES to develop LMI for All. This is now being funded by the Department for Education.
The online portal includes LMI that can answer the questions people commonly ask when thinking about their careers, including ‘how much do people get paid?’ and ‘what type of person does that job?’. The first release includes information from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, the Labour Force Survey, the Employer Skills Survey and Working Futures. LMI for All also includes some vacancy data from Universal JobMatch, as well as data on interests, skills and abilities from the US O*Net system.
Some examples of who is using LMI for All include:
LMI for All was first developed in 2012 and from this time has gone through a process of development with significant enhancements to the database and the technical infrastructure. To find out more, have a look at the reports produced documenting the process:
In spring 2015, LMI for All received the go-ahead from UKCES Commissioners to enter a full project phase, with the remit to engage more stakeholders and expand LMI for All’s reach. Work on LMI for All is continuing with funding from the Department for Education.