Dedication tops the list of desirable skills
October saw a huge increase in the proportion of job descriptions seeking employees who demonstrate hard work and dedication. Employers seem to be looking for workers who can really buckle down and contribute. But it is also interesting that so many of the top soft skills this month relate to personal or even emotional qualities: trust, adaptability, confidence, receptivity, and passion. This suggests that employers are being very deliberate about the kinds of colleagues they want to bring into their teams and an understanding that these new additions will need to be open to whatever comes their way.
Job openings requiring vocational certifications show strong growth
One of the hottest areas of the U.S. job market right now is roles for those with vocational training or an associate’s degree. Most of these are skilled trade roles or specific professional training, which aligns with where job creation has been in recent months. But October saw a 16% jump in vocational openings and more than 6% for associates degrees, a much bigger gain than was seen in most other educational levels. Another strong area was for applicants with a bachelor’s degree and more than five years of experience, continuing the trend in which professional jobs are bouncing back for those with substantial work experience more quickly than for entry-level professionals.
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.
