by Oriane Casale
November 2019
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 markets 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 to help individuals make informed career decisions. We hope 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 the United States 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 2018 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, PY2018 (July 2018 to June 2019) | |
|---|---|
| Type of Contact | Number of Customers |
| Website | 471,025 unique page views |
| Telephone, email, and mail requests | 2,593 contacts |
| Presentations and trainings | 302 presentations/trainings given 9,000 audience members |
| E-Mail notification lists: LMI press releases, Trends, Review, and Local Look subscribers | 13,692 subscribers |
| Trends and Review print magazines | 721 subscribers, Trends sent quarterly, Review monthly |
| Source: DEED LMI Office | |
Overall, LMI web traffic represented about 12 percent of all unique pageviews on the DEED website in PY 2018.
Bucking the conventional wisdom that 'people are afraid of data', our data tools are our most popular resource (see Table 2).
| Table 2. LMI Web Traffic, PY 2018 | |
|---|---|
| LMI Web Property | Unique Pageviews* |
| Data Tools | 122,786 |
| Current Economic Highlights | 29,520 |
| Review | 28,708 |
| Trends | 19,235 |
| LMI Jobseeker Portal | 11,596 |
| Regional LMI and Local Look Blog | 11,814 |
| LMI Help | 5,823 |
| * A 'unique pageview' is counted once regardless of how many times the user loads the page during a session or visits 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 regular publications available online and in print.
Table 3 provides the list of LMI's top five data tools. Our most popular data tool is the Cost of Living tool, which provides a yearly estimate of the basic-needs cost of living in Minnesota by county, region, and statewide.
| Table 3. Top Five LMI Data Tools by Usage | |
|---|---|
| LMI Data Tool | Unique Pageviews |
| Cost of Living in Minnesota | 32,963 |
| Career and Education Explorer | 19,539 |
| Occupations in Demand | 16,609 |
| Occupational Employment Statistics | 13,531 |
| Employment Outlook (projections) | 5,348 |
| Source: Google Analytics | |
The second most popular data tool is the Career and Education Explorer, DEED's main career exploration tool, which lets users explore a wide range of occupations and related education, find wages, demand, job opportunities, and more as well as links to the Eligible Training Provider listings including WIOA-certified trainings.
The Occupations in Demand tool allows users to find out what jobs are in high demand in each region of the state. The typical wage, long-term employment outlook, training (or degree) required, and schools that offer training programs for each occupation are also listed.
Finally, the Employment Outlook data tool shows one-year and 10-year projections of employment growth or decline by occupation and industry for Minnesota's regions, statewide, and for the U.S.
During 2018 and 2019 we continued to make enhancements, guided by the needs of our users, to content and data tools on the LMI portion of the DEED website.
The LMI Regional Analysts have continued to add to the Regional Labor Market Portal based on customer feedback. Additional content added in PY2018 included county labor market profiles, which means 87 new labor market profiles for our customers to use in their work and decision making.
We created a new data tool called the Bachelor's Degree and Career Destination Tool (BDCD). The BDCD displays fields of study at the Bachelor's level and the observed labor market outcomes for Minnesota residents. It provides information on occupations, employment and unemployment, labor force participation, and wage and salary incomes associated with field of study for Bachelor's degree holders. This information can assist prospective and current students, educational institutions, researchers, and analysts with the planning and evaluation of workforce outcomes for various programs of study.
Finally LMI worked with the CareerForce team to incorporate labor market and career information into the new CareerForceMN website. This website provides users access to job-search and career-planning advice as well as a portal by which to sign up for workshops and join networking groups and job clubs.
Each year we examine information on LMI customer satisfaction from the Regional Analyst Customer Consultation Satisfaction Survey. Our most recent data is from 2017.
In 2017 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.
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 or 1-888-234-1114
