Personal traits rise in importance to employers
July’s job openings suggest that employers are increasingly focusing on character traits like friendliness and trustworthiness. Passion and attitude also show up in the top ten list. This is a shift from last month when openings were more likely to mention problem-solving and analytical skills. However, hard work and determination continue to show up again and again, reflecting the challenging nature of work these days and employers’ desire to find workers who are really going to give 100%.
Larger organizations increase their share of job openings
In spite of high-profile lay-offs by very large companies, organizations with more than 50,000 employees are advertising for new hires at an increasing rate. Their proportion of job openings increased 4% this month while smaller organizations, those with 50-199 employees, decreased their share by about the same amount. And the largest employers represent a much larger share of the overall job market than they did last year.
Methodology
Market IQ collects job postings daily from over 7 million+ websites in the U.S. Our system automatically identifies, extracts, and structures job data into 100+ attributes using Textkernel’s AI powered parsing technology. Each posting is normalized against professional taxonomies, enriched with company information, and deduplicated using sophisticated algorithms to identify unique job opportunities. The system maintains high levels of accuracy through automated quality controls and continuous improvement processes, making it a trusted source for U.S. labor market insights.
Skills
Market IQ utilizes Textkernel’s proprietary Skills Normalization Taxonomy (SNT) to extract and normalize skills from job postings. Our taxonomy encompasses 13,200+ unique skill concepts mapped through 250,000+ terms, covering professional skills, IT skills, soft skills, and languages. Using advanced machine learning, the system identifies skills in context, disambiguates ambiguous terms, and normalizes them to standardized concepts—enabling accurate cross-market analysis regardless of how employers phrase skill requirements. The taxonomy is continuously updated quarterly based on millions of job postings, market feedback, and labor market trends. This data-driven approach ensures Market IQ captures both established and emerging skills as they appear in the U.S. job market, providing unparalleled insights into skill demand across industries and regions. All analysis of skills excludes any skills that appear in fewer than 10,000 job descriptions.
