LMI for All is an online data portal, developed by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills and currently funded by the Department for Education, 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.
This video was filmed at a half day symposium held on 1 December to showcase how LMI is being used; to share best practice; and promote new developments to the service, which can benefit current and future users.

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.

Who is developing LMI for All?

The Institute of Employment Research at the University of Warwick with Pontydysgu were commissioned by UKCES in 2012 to develop the LMI for All pilot and test its feasibility. Since then it has continued to be developed and updated.  The LMI for All service is now being funded by the Department for Education.

What LMI sources are included?

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 LMI for All service through its freely accessible API includes information from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, the Labour Force Survey, the Employer Skills Survey, Working Futures and the UK Census of the Population. LMI for All also includes some vacancy data from the Department for Work and Pensions ‘FindaJob’ service, as well as data on interests, knowledge, skills and abilities from the US O*Net system which has been mapped to the UK Standard Occupational Classification (SOC).

Who is using LMI for All?

Some examples of who is using LMI for All include:

• iCould is a careers website which uses LMI for All to provide context alongside careers videos
• U-Explore  provide careers guidance solutions for schools and colleges using LMI for All in Start
• SACU is an online source of careers information for young people, parents, teachers and careers advisors
• RCU Ltd. is a data dashboard which draws on LMI for All data and is designed to help inform curriculum design

How has LMI for All developed?

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. LMI for All also when through a process of testing in a series of hack days. To find out more about the development have a look at the reports produced documenting the process:

• 2012 Summary report on feasibility study
• 2012-15 Report of development process 
• 2015-16 Report on data, technical and stakeholder activities
• 2018 Report on Labour market information for all: stakeholder engagement and usage, data and technical developments, documenting work and activities undertaken in 2016-2017

In 2013, the CareerHack contest was organised by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES). It challenged developers around the globe to build an app based on the LMI for All data. To find out more about the CareerHack competition and the winners.

In 2016, the team organised a symposium with the aim of increasing awareness about LMI for All and introducing some of our third party users. More information on the LMI for All Symposium held in 2016 is available.

What is next for LMI for All?

Since 2015 when LMI for All received the go-ahead from UKCES Commissioners to enter a full project phase, the team have been working with the remit to update the database, engage more stakeholders and expand LMI for All’s reach. Work on LMI for All is continuing with funding from the Department for Education and we are looking at ways to expand the database.