CLEVELAND — Memo to President Trump: The jobs market is alive and thriving in tech — so much so, there are 627,000 unfilled occupations.
The booming market grew 2% to about 7.3 million workers last year as the digital economy continued to flourish in jobs for software, cybersecurity and cloud computing, according to Cyberstates 2017, an annual analysis of the nation's tech industry by technology association CompTIA released Monday.
Hence, the article seems to indicate that the 627,000 numbers comes from Cyberstates 2017. A search of that document reveals that it comes from page 14 which contains the following stat under its State of Technology Summary for the United States:
626,560 Q42016 POSTINGS FOR TECH OCC. JOB OPENINGS
Analysis of the Claim
Hence, the 627,000 number is the approximate number of postings for tech occupation job openings in the fourth quarter of 2016. There is no indication that this is the number of unfilled jobs. The following description of job posting data is on page 133 of the document:
JOB POSTING DATA
The job posting data found within Cyberstatesis produced by the firm Burning Glass Technologies.
Job posting data is a useful, but an imperfect proxy for job demand. Not every posting translates to a new job; hiring firms may change their plans, post multiple times for the same job, hire internally, try different approaches to find the right candidate and so forth. Also, one ad may be posted for multiple openings. Burning Glass Technologies Labor Insights addresses many of these issues, but it is impossible to eliminate all possible sources of over or undercounting.
Additionally, within a time period, there may be situations where a worker is hired, the person isn't the right fit and is let go, and a firm starts the process over again. In the aggregate there is single position, but using job posting data, it may appear there are two positions. Labor turnover –whether voluntary or involuntary, is another variable that affects the interpretation of job posting data. CompTIA recommends using job posting data in conjunction with BLS, EMSI, and other data sources to get a more complete picture of labor supply and demand dynamics.
Hence, the document itself describes the limitations of using data from Burning Glass Technologies. Furthermore, the 627,000 number makes absolutely no adjustment for the number of new workers who entered the market during the fourth quarter of 2016 and how many of them were hired to fill the new jobs. In saying these jobs are unfilled, it seems to be assuming that absolutely nobody was hired!
Computerworld Analysis
The Computerworld analysis did an initial analysis of a similar claim analyzed at this link. It describes problems noted by Hal Salzman, a professor at Rutgers University. It states:
Burning Glass's approach draws concerns from Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University, who studies the science and engineering workforce. "They claim they deduplicate, but they don't publish their methodology; there is no external verification," he said.
Salzman believes the deduplication can be a challenge with job ads. In Salzman's own research, he has run across jobs that are posted in multiple cities that appear as if they are specific to each of those cities. The recruiters are doing this to keep prospects from automatically rejecting the job because of location, he said.
Further on, the article states:
Although the White House doesn't raise the issue of temporary H-1B workers in its training push, the use of the half-million plus job openings in its announcement creates a data point for supporters of raising the H-1B cap. But Salzman argues -- something he did along with other researchers in an Economic Policy Institute paper -- that the U.S. has a sufficient supply of STEM workers, and that the demand for guest workers isn't in large part due to unmet demand but instead meant to replace the existing supply or existing workforce.
Fake Job Postings
Another possibility that needs to be considered is fake job listings. A Daily Kos article titled Job seekers beware of the fake job postings describes the types of fake job postings as follows:
Fake jobs can be classified into three broad groups of increasing sleaziness. The first is a company that hires directly may have some extra money in their budget for recruiting and they have to spend it in a way that will survive an internal audit. So, even though they don't currently need more people on the help desk or manning customer service, they will put an ad up to generate man hours processing the incoming applications and be able to justify it if questioned saying they're filling their database with potential recruits when the positions do become available. Head-hunters can make the same argument, they don't need anyone now, but they might in the future and putting up a fake ad means more resumes in their database, which in turn can be converted into more money in the bank.
The second motive they give is to harvest contact information and the third is full-blown identity theft and fishing scams. Following are additional reasons for fake job postings listed in an article titled The Dirty Truth: Why Employers Post Fake Jobs:
So that employers can gauge the current talent pool.
So that companies can get a back-up for your position and keep resumes on file.
To make it easier for nepotism and other unfair hiring practices to occur. When the boss wants his nephew hired, it’s not always cut and dry. In many organizations, the company needs to “look outside” for suitable candidates. Searching externally for a candidate can also satisfy any potential Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) mandates.
So that people can add you to a list.
So that criminals can thrive.
So that people can copy you. Resume plagiarism is prevalent.
Since Burning Glass doesn't publish their methodology, there's no way to judge what, if anything, they do to detect and avoid counting fake job postings.
Summary
The first problem is that the USA Today article totally misrepresents the 626,560 number given on page 14 of Cyberstates 2017. The number is listed as the number of postings for tech occupation job openings in the fourth quarter of 2016. The USA Today article takes this to be the number of unfilled job openings. This is essentially assuming that nobody was hired for any of these positions!
The second problem is that the Burning Glass database and methodology are proprietary and cannot be examined or verified. For example, there is no way to verify that Burning Glass properly accounts for duplicate or fake ads and a number of other problems. It's fine for a private company to purchase and use their services since they are free to do whatever due diligence they feel is necessary. But it is not proper to use proprietary data to set public policy and not make it available for public scrutiny.
References to the Claim
Following are references to the claim that there were that there were 627,000 unfilled positions in tech in 2017.