Coordination and trustworthiness rise in popularity with employers
May saw coordination skills jump to the top of the list of emerging skills, a focus on fundamental job skills that has been rare in recent months. However, the next most in-demand skills are trustworthiness and leadership, continuing the trend of employers focusing on more personal characteristics as they search for the right employees.
Associate’s degree roles see biggest growth in May
Job openings increased across all levels of education, but the gains were not evenly distributed. Opportunities for candidates with associate’s degrees increased more than any other level of education, up 8% this month. However, associate’s degree roles are still down -15% from May of last year. Only those with a bachelor’s degree and five or more years of related experience have seen openings increase both this month and year over year. Roles for those right out of college were up around 2% this month, a smaller increase than any other group.
Methodology
Market IQ collects job postings daily from over 7 million+ websites in the U.S. Our system automatically identifies, extracts, and structures job data into 100+ attributes using Textkernel’s AI powered parsing technology. Each posting is normalized against professional taxonomies, enriched with company information, and deduplicated using sophisticated algorithms to identify unique job opportunities. The system maintains high levels of accuracy through automated quality controls and continuous improvement processes, making it a trusted source for U.S. labor market insights.
Skills
Market IQ utilizes Textkernel’s proprietary Skills Normalization Taxonomy (SNT) to extract and normalize skills from job postings. Our taxonomy encompasses 13,200+ unique skill concepts mapped through 250,000+ terms, covering professional skills, IT skills, soft skills, and languages. Using advanced machine learning, the system identifies skills in context, disambiguates ambiguous terms, and normalizes them to standardized concepts—enabling accurate cross-market analysis regardless of how employers phrase skill requirements. The taxonomy is continuously updated quarterly based on millions of job postings, market feedback, and labor market trends. This data-driven approach ensures Market IQ captures both established and emerging skills as they appear in the U.S. job market, providing unparalleled insights into skill demand across industries and regions. All analysis of skills excludes any skills that appear in fewer than 10,000 job descriptions.
