LinkedIn Workforce Report | Chicago | February 2017
Over 133 million workers in the U.S. have LinkedIn profiles; thousands of companies in the U.S. use LinkedIn to recruit; millions of jobs are posted on LinkedIn in the U.S. every month; and members can add over 50,000 skills to their profiles to showcase their professional brands. That gives us unique and valuable insight into U.S. workforce trends.
The LinkedIn Workforce Report is a monthly report on employment trends in the U.S. workforce. It’s divided into two sections: a U.S. section that provides insights into hiring, skills gaps, and migration trends across the country, and a City section that provides insights into localized employment trends in 10 of the largest U.S. cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.
Our vision is to create economic opportunity for every worker in the global workforce. We hope you’ll use insights from our report to better navigate your career - whether you’re unemployed and wondering if hiring is improving in your industry, exploring new skills to learn to make yourself more attractive to employers, or considering a move and curious which cities need your skills most.
Hiring
Good news for jobseekers: Hiring was 10.2% higher in January 2017 than January 2016, and seasonally-adjusted hiring (hiring that excludes seasonal hiring variations - like companies hiring less in December due to the holiday season) was 7.5% higher in January 2017 than December 2016. If your New Year’s resolution is finding a new job, check out LinkedIn Jobs because new jobs are opening up in Chicago!
Skills Gap
A skills gap is a mismatch between the skills employers need (demand) and the skills workers have (supply). There is an abundance of skills when supply exceeds demand. There is a scarcity of skills when demand exceeds supply. A city with a scarcity of skills needs more workers with certain skills, while a city with an abundance of skills has too many workers with certain skills.
Chicago’s skills gap is driven by a slight abundance of workers with certain skills.
Here are the skills Chicago has in abundance. As you can see, several of the skills are investment and finance related. If you have these skills, consider learning the skills in scarcity below to better stand out from the pack.
Here are the skills Chicago has in scarcity. If you live in Chicago and don’t have these skills, check out the LinkedIn Learning courses below - they’ll teach you the skills in scarcity so you’ll be more attractive to employers in the city.
- Healthcare Management
- C/C++
- Web Programming
- Microsoft Windows Systems
- Ecology and Environmental Science
- Perl/Python/Ruby
- Photography
- GIS
Migration
As you can see in the two maps below, Chicago gains workers from smaller cities in the Midwest, but loses workers to coastal cities.
San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Denver gained the most workers from Chicago in the last 12 months. So for every 10,000 LinkedIn members in Chicago, 4.7 workers moved to San Francisco in the last year.