The U.S. Department of Labor is involved in a promising new initiative relating to career pathways data, which will improve education, training, and labor market data linkages. The Labor Department, the University of Chicago's Center for Data Science and Public Policy, and the National Economic Council, will develop a Skills Cooperative Research Database (SCRD). The project will harness public and private data with the goal of providing streamlined, secure access to information about jobs and skills.
The collaboration will create a new resource, the SCRD, which will integrate data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau, with privately-held data from job websites, employment agencies, human resources management software.
Once completed, the SCRD will be a shared public resource highlighting the relevant data for every job in America. Employers and adult education practitioners will be able to use the data to observe local trends in job skill supply and demand, to better guide their workforce education and career pathways programs.