Web-based methodology for monitoring new jobs. Updating the occupations observatory

The identification of new and emerging occupations has proven to be a challenging task, in which real-time information on labour market developments is key. At present, the most commonly used data sources do not provide up-to-date information, are narrow in scope or limited in size. In this light, online job portals have been suggested as an interesting data source for real-time labour market analysis. This report aims to contribute to the identification of new and emerging occupations by presenting an updated version of the methodology underpinning the Occupations Observatory developed by Beblavý et al. (2016). We use data extracted from online job boards using web scraping techniques, compare newly identified occupations with existing occupational classifications, and present examples of the tasks and skills required. With this update, we set out to further fine-tune the data collection, processing and analysis steps, but also to make the methodology and outputs more user-friendly, while providing more information at the same time. The proposed revised methodology consists of seven stages, and has been tested for the case of Ireland.