Job market data from live job postings.
How job postings work as labour market data, how they differ from official statistics, and how to count jobs by place, title, source and employer with an API.
Updated
The short answer
Job postings are the fastest view of the labour market: they show what employers want to hire today, by place, job and pay. The Jobs API gives you live postings from employer career sites in the US and Canada, counts by source and region, and employer hiring trends. Official statistics agencies remain the source for employment and vacancy rates.
Is job posting data the same as employment data?
No. Employment data counts people who have jobs. Official vacancy surveys estimate open jobs across the whole economy. Both come from statistics agencies, like Statistics the US and Canada Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Job posting data counts the jobs employers advertise. It is faster and much more detailed, by employer, title, skill and pay. It is not a full census: some jobs are filled without a posting, and one job can be posted in several places. Use postings to see direction and detail, and official data for levels and rates.
What job market questions can postings answer?
- Which employers are hiring now, and which are slowing down.
- Which job titles are growing in a city, province or state.
- How many jobs show pay, and what pay ranges employers state.
- How many jobs are remote.
- Which skills and tools employers ask for.
- How long jobs stay open before they close.
How do I count jobs with the API?
/v1/stats gives counts of active jobs by hiring system and by state (or by province with country=CA). It is recomputed every 30 minutes.
/v1/active-ats-count counts jobs that match your filters, without downloading them.
For anything finer, pull the jobs with /v1/jobs or the feeds and count them yourself, by title, place, pay or skill.
Try it: hiring by province
curl "https://api.thejobsapi.com/v1/stats?country=CA" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"Counts are active source records. A job listed by more than one source can appear in more than one count, so treat them as postings, not as unique vacancies.
Can I see hiring trends by employer?
Yes. Company profiles hold a hiring section worked out from our jobs: open jobs by country and region, new jobs in the last 7, 30 and 90 days, a trend (growing, steady, slowing or new), top titles and places, and remote share. Find growing employers with /v1/organizations?hiring_trend=growing.
How do I track change over time?
Save what you pull and compare. Use /v1/active-ats with time_frame=24h for jobs first collected each day, and /v1/expired-ats for jobs that closed. Each job has the date it was posted and the date we first collected it, so you can measure how long jobs stay open.
What does it cost?
The US is $900 USD a month, Canada is $200 USD a month, and both are $1,100 USD a month, with no job or request limit. The free trial lasts 14 days and includes 100,000 jobs from the US and Canada, with no request limit. You do not need a card. The trial shows a sample of the company directory.
Questions people ask
What is a labor market data API?
An API that returns data about jobs and workers. Some return official statistics; others, like ours, return live job postings you can count and analyse.
Where do I get official employment data?
From the US Bureau of Labor Statistics for the US, and Statistics Canada for Canada. Both publish free data.
Are job posting counts the same as job vacancies?
No. One vacancy can be posted more than once, and some vacancies are never posted. Postings show detail and direction quickly; vacancy surveys estimate the total.
Can I get job market data by city?
Yes. Filter /v1/jobs by city, province or state, then count what comes back.
Can I see salary trends?
For jobs where the employer states pay. Use has_salary=true to get only those jobs.
Do you have historical job postings?
The feeds hold active jobs, up to 183 days back. To study longer periods, save what you pull over time.