by Oriane Casale
February 2017
The mission of the Labor Market Information (LMI) Office of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) is to collect, compile, and deliver high quality data and analysis about the state's labor market and economy. Our work supports Minnesota's businesses, its workforce and economic development system, and the workers of today and tomorrow.
We gather, analyze, and disseminate economic data on Minnesota's business community, workforce, and job market. We also provide key economic indicators, employment projections, and regional and statewide industry and workforce analysis along with information aimed at helping individuals make informed career decisions. We believe that access to high quality, up-to-date labor market information has played a role in making Minnesota one of the strongest job markets in America and that it will continue to help shape our economic future.
To improve our information and services, we regularly summarize related information including customer type, information requested, and satisfaction level. We share this information with you in the hopes that it may be as helpful for you to see how others are using our information as it is for us in guiding how we can best supply the information.
The information contained in this summary comes from several sources:
Information from our 2016 customer summary is included in this article as well as updates on projects we have undertaken and services we have improved during the past year.
The LMI Office offers a number of delivery methods for the data and information we provide. These methods include, but are not limited to:
Table 1 provides a snapshot of customer contacts we made over the past year. The majority of LMI customers accessed information from our website, but a significant minority received LMI services through other means.
| Table 1. LMI Customers by Information Delivery Method, 2016 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Type of Contact | Contacts | Number of Customers |
| Website | 775,138 page views | 505,273 unique page views |
| Telephone, email, mail requests | 2,636 contacts | 2,636 contacts |
| Presentations and trainings | 329 presentations/trainings | 11,019 audience members |
| E-Mail notification list including Labor Market Information and Local Look subscribers | 134,556+ notifications sent by e-mail | 11,213 subscribers |
| Trends print magazine | 5,066 magazines sent by USPS mail | 1,267 subscribers |
| Source: DEED LMI Office | ||
During 2016 we continued to make enhancements, guided by the needs of our users, to content and navigation on the LMI pages of the DEED website.
We reorganized our menu of offerings by user category under the "data" tab. Now the first links you see provide access to labor market information for "Job Seekers", "Career Explorers", "Employers" and "News Media" to help our customers more efficiently find the information they are looking for.
In 2016 we were able to tap a new data source, driver's license records. Linked to Unemployment Insurance Wage Records, we now have information on the demographic characteristics of our workforce that has not been available before. The Quarterly Employment Demographics (QED) tool which will soon be available on our website, will provide access to these data. For more information on this new data source and what it can be used for, read Steve Hine's article in the June issue of Trends.
Bucking the conventional wisdom that 'people are afraid of data', our data tools are our most popular resource. Of 505,273 unique pageviews on the LMI website, our data tools accounted for 77 percent of the total (see Table 2).
| Table 2. LMI Web Traffic, 2016 | ||
|---|---|---|
| LMI Web Property | Pageviews* | Unique Pageviews* |
| Data Tools | 630,812 | 392,973 |
| Current Economic Highlights | 39,413 | 30,806 |
| Review | 33,212 | 26,334 |
| LMI Jobseeker Portal | 20,433 | 16,186 |
| Trends | 21,306 | 16,758 |
| Regional LMI and Local Look Blog | 21,045 | 15,341 |
| LMI Help | 8,917 | 6,875 |
| Grand Total | 775,138 | 505,273 |
| *A 'pageview' is counted every time a page is viewed or loaded. So if a user refreshes the page during a session, a second pageview is counted. A 'unique pageview' is counted once regardless of how many times the user loads the page during a session or visit on the website. | ||
| Source: Google Analytics | ||
Our on-line publications Current Economic Highlights, Minnesota Economic Trends, Minnesota Employment Review, and Regional LMI which includes the Local Look blog had a combined 18 percent of the unique pageviews to the LMI portion of the DEED website. Current Economic Highlights offers summary analysis of key data including wages, employment, unemployment, and unemployment insurance claims. Trends and Review are LMI's periodical publications available online and in print.
Last year we added an LMI Jobseeker Portal in the "For Jobseekers" portion of the DEED website in order to guide job seekers to LMI tools that we have built with them in mind. This remained the fourth most popular way that customers accessed LMI on the DEED website, accounting for 16,186 of the unique pageviews or 3.2 percent of the total.
Our most popular data tool is the Occupational Employment Statistics or OES tool, which shows employment and wages by occupation and region in Minnesota. This information can help employers benchmark wages and can help job seekers and students explore careers. Table 3 provides the ranked list of data tools.
| Table 3. Top LMI Data Tools Usage | ||
|---|---|---|
| LMI Data Tool | Pageviews | Unique Pageviews |
| Occupational Employment Statistics | 80,109 | 40,510 |
| Employment Outlook (Projections) | 45,296 | 29,870 |
| Cost of Living in Minnesota | 33,457 | 27,585 |
| Local Area Unemployment Statistics | 54,740 | 27,092 |
| Occupations in Demand | 44,636 | 25,396 |
| Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages | 48,709 | 21,564 |
| Career and Education Explorer | 23,394 | 17,613 |
| Current Employment Statistics | 20,173 | 12,348 |
| Match Jobs to Experience | 20,131 | 12,115 |
| Graduate Employment Outcomes | 18,117 | 8,736 |
Each year we examine information on LMI customer satisfaction from the DEED Employer-Customer Satisfaction Survey and the Regional Analyst Customer Consultation Satisfaction Survey.
These results are for two groups of employers who identified themselves as have having obtained labor market information from a DEED representative, the internet, or a publication. The two groups were employers who posted job orders and employers who were visited by DEED business service representatives.
Results of the survey show that:
Overall, 93 percent felt that the information met their needs either very well or well. Ninety-seven percent felt that the information was presented in a clear and understandable manner. Overall, 97 percent used the information to make decisions about wages and salaries, for workforce or business planning, to prepare a report, or for another purpose.
All customers felt that it was easy or somewhat easy to find the information that they were looking for. This is up from 83 percent last year and 78 percent the year before. We hope that this improvement in satisfaction reflects the changes in organization and navigation that we've made to our website over the past several years.
Over the first half of 2016, contacts were extremely satisfied with the consultations that the LMI regional analysts provided, with almost all the key survey questions showing high levels of satisfaction.
Overall, 92 percent of respondents would definitely recommend an LMI regional analyst to a colleague who needed specific information about labor market data or statistics, and another 8 percent would probably recommend them.
Moreover 69 percent of the survey respondents used the information they received from a Regional Analyst to help them make a decision.
Other promising information from survey respondents shows:
Overall, these results show that while LMI customers are able to obtain much of the information they need from our website, contact with our Regional Analysts improves their experience. That is likely because the RAs are able to help them find and understand geo-specific information most useful to them and do it one on one.
We always welcome comments and feedback on our products and services. You can email us at DEED.lmi@state.mn.us or telephone us at our helpline: 651-259-7384.
