Job seekers wish to know what skills are required by the industry in their region and also, what skills pay the most. So do institutions of higher and vocational education. Unfortunately, there is no information about this. It is considered hard to collate such information and the old school way of running surveys with corporations is time consuming, expensive and mired by subjectivity.

We went after this problem the big data way - we scrapped some 4 million job openings from the web for the US, automatically matched them to our taxonomy of 1064 job roles and the 200+ skills required for these job roles. What did we get out of this? The US Skill Demand Map - For each state in the US, we know what percent of open jobs require a given skill and how much does a skill pay. For instance, see the Heat Map below -- it shows how much does the software engineering skill pays in different US states. All this is generated automatically and be updated in minutes every month based on the current open jobs in the market!

Figure1: Compensation for software engineering skill

This map is interactive. A jobseeker can enter his key skill to find which states demand it the most and which states pay for it the most. Additionally, s/he can scroll across the map to find the demand/compensation in each state for a given skill. On the other hand, the candidate can enter a state and find out top paying and high-demand skills in the state. Try it now!

Such analysis also helps us uncover policy trends (See our report). We found that agreeableness and finger dexterity are the most in demand skills after Information Gathering and Synthesis, which has the highest demand. One may see in the map below the states which have more percent of jobs requiring agreeableness and those where finger dexterity is required more often.

Figure2: Skills in highest demand in each U.S. state (other than Information Gathering & Synthesis)

On the other hand, we can find the states which have the most demand and pay the most for say, analytical skills. New York pays the most for the skill, whereas the highest percent of jobs in Virginia need analytical skills. (See Figure 3)

Figure 3: Heat maps for demand and compensation for analytical skills

The U.S. Skill Demand Map fills a major information gap in the labor market. To our knowledge, this is the first effort to objectively present the demand for skills across US states to aid better decision-making by job seekers. It is based on objective data, it is quick, accurate and user friendly.

Trying to understand what skill to gain or how best to utilize your skills? Use our interactive map now!

Varun is the CTO of Aspiring Minds, which he co-founded in 2008. Visit research.aspiringminds.com to read through similar such interesting work from the research group at Aspiring Minds. To subscribe to Varun's posts, "Follow" him. He tweets @varaggarwal

Write to us at research@aspiringminds.com , or better, join our research group!