Labour Market Information

More from the Leitch Report. Oh yes, the fun never stops around here.

Buried away in the report (Page 91, Section 5.23, thanks for asking), is this little gem.

"Labour market information (LMI) provides a context in which a firm makes an investment decision. At present, there are various sources of labour market information for employers. However, there is little co-ordination between different sources, meaning that in some instances they deliver contradictory information. As Chapter 4 sets out, effective LMI is an essential tool for SSCs to fulfil their role. The Review recommends that SSCs have primary responsibility for gathering and disseminating LMI, within a common framework.'

Now for those of (cough) us who produce and use LMI, this is very interesting - even though it's just a recommendation and needs a bit of work (a common framework for a start) to get together. An integrated national LMI resource would be a colossally useful tool, and in theory, the SSCs are in a good position to deliver it. In practise, though, there are a number of problems to be anticipated. Firstly, the SSCs certainly don't cover the whole economy and, as stated in the Report itself, are poorly defined and sometimes overlap. Secondly, and at least as seriously - where is the expertise? The SSDA's magnum opus, the excellent Working Futures report, was written by the Institute of Employment Research at Warwick - an excellent team, but conspicuously not part of the SSCs themselves.

The SSCs published a fair amount of LMI over the last 18 months or so as part of the Sector Skills Agreement process, but of varying quality, and it's often quite hard to find. The SSCs in general have also been accused, with some justification, at being poor at LMI for graduates and above - and some feel that they are not great communicators. This is not true for all of them, of course, but for this to work, all the SSCs have to get it right. I wonder if it will.

Technorati tags: labour market information, LMI, Leitch Report