1 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

Today’s Agenda
 Brief introduction to The Conference Board and Help Wanted
OnLine® (HWOL)
 Quick look at the easy-to-use online tool into this huge dataset
 At look at how to use it for something as new as the App Economy
 Trials for the online tool are available if you would like to “kick the tires”
2 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

The Conference Board
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Nonprofit, nonpartisan and non-advocacy
Founded 1916 – With over 95 years service to the global business community
Mission to provide reliable, unbiased information to help business improve their performance and better serve society
Global organization with offices in New
York, Brussels, Hong Kong, Beijing
Supported by 2,000+ major international corporations and 600 educational and government members worldwide
Quoted source globally on economics and business issues
3 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

120
100
80
60
40
20
60
For over 50 year the only measure of labor demand was
The Conference Board Help Wanted Index of print ads
National HWI and Employment
1970:03
1970:11
(-6)
1974:07
1975: 04
(-4)
1980:03
1980:07
(-11)
1981:07
1982:12
(-8)
1990: 06
1991:05
(-18)
2001:02
2003:08
(-12)
120000
100000
80000
60000
65 70 75
HWI (Left)
80 85 90 95 00
EMPLOYMENT (Right)
05
4 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

What makes The Conference Board Help Wanted
OnLine® (HWOL) Data Series different?
 HWOL is the only nationally recognized (and published monthly) number on the universe of labor demand
 HWOL incorporates the long 60+ year history of The Conference
Board in analyzing and understanding labor demand
 HWOL has the most accurate occupational detail, consistent with
Federal data series need for eligibility for 1) grant funding; 2) analysis of skill gaps for detailed occupations
 HWOL focuses on mismatches in the labor market and the analysis that members companies need to improve their businesses performance
 Detailed job demand data used to help people find jobs benefits from the analytical rigor provided by all who use HWOL
5 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine® (HWOL)
Data Series
 HWOL developed to produce publicationquality “economic time series data
 Provides labor market analysis compatible with BLS unemployment, employment, Supply/Demand, projections. . . .
 7-year time series, universe count, unduplicated ads, 24/7spidering operations
 Over 50 million detailed geographic by occupation time series available and over 400 million ads
 US, regions, States, MSAs, counties and cities, all by 8-digit
SOC/O*Net
 Over 400 million unduplicated ads covering 7 years for analysis
 Green job time series by detailed geography and 8-digit occupation
6 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

Who Currently Uses HWOL?
 States: 20 States (CA, TX, FL, PA, IL, NC, SC . . .) with 10 more under trial tests, many in their WIBs and public facing website
 Federal Reserve Banks: NY, Boston, St. Louis, Dallas Feds use HWOL for various projects, mismatches in the labor market, econ. development
 Research Universities/Institutions: Brookings, Harvard Business School
 Corporations & Central Banks: TCB members including well know companies like Apple and the Central Banks of numerous countries
 Newspapers/Media: Front page of WSJ, NYTimes , MediaOne, foreign press and local media via our State clients from monthly press release
 Individual researchers: and today we’ll use the work of Michael Mandel on “The App Economy” (April 2012) as an example
7 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

Understanding how labor demand drives the economy and creates job . . . and analysis of skills gaps and opportunities
Chart 1. Labor Supply vs. Labor Demand
U.S. Seasonally Adjusted Data
No. Unemployed
16 000 000
15 000 000
14 000 000
13 000 000
12 000 000
11 000 000
10 000 000
9 000 000
8 000 000
7 000 000
6 000 000
5 000 000
4 000 000
3 000 000
Unemployment HWOL
Skills Gap or
Opportunity?
No. of
Ads
7 000 000
6 500 000
6 000 000
5 500 000
5 000 000
4 500 000
4 000 000
3 500 000
3 000 000
2 500 000
8
Source: The Conference Board, BLS
© 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

. . . expertise in understanding what employers are really demanding in their hires and what it means for the growth of the local economy
Sizing the “App Economy”
*App economy employment (jobs, thousands), not including spillovers. Based on 90s days ending December 31,
2011. Industry employment as of November 2011. App economy jobs are distributed across all economies. Data:
The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine® (HWOL) Data Series, BLS. Source: Michael Mandel, South Mountain
Economics, LLC.
9 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

What is the App Economy?
 What’s an App?
 A lightweight program designed to run on a mobile platform
(iPhone, Android) that’s fun and has useful digital content for everyone to use — think “Angry Birds” or how to find a restaurant
 Is the essence of innovation with lost of people creating “apps”
 Didn’t exist before 2007
 By December 2011, conservatively, almost 500,000 jobs in the
U.S. due to apps.
 Twothirds of the “app economy” jobs are NOT in CA but in
Georgia, Florida, Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix
 A growth ‘Sector’ during the recession
10 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

What’s the big deal about the App Economy?
 Every consumer facing business (and many B2B businesses) need an app to be the public face of their business
 An app is the new front door to every business’ house
 The app economy may be the construction sector of the 21st century
11 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

What Are the App jobs?
 Creators: from teenagers to company teams
 Updaters and maintainers of the app
 Creators of the app infrastructure
 Jobs in other sectors selling, marketing, etc.
 In other words innovation creates lots of jobs not just for the creative teams and workers in the app company but across lots of ecosystems (employment spread effects)
12 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

What are some “app” terms?
 Android
 iOS
 Blackberry
 Facebook
 Windows Mobile
 Windows Phone
13 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

Can you find app jobs in the official BLS data?
 Too new to show up in the BLS Statistics
 BUT . . . need to have these new jobs/occupations categorized consistent with the federal data (SOC, O*NET, NAICS)
14 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

What’s the Methodology used to the Mandel piece to size the App Economy?
 Find the “core” app economy jobs Computer and math jobs, the creators if you will . . . (Hint: page 5 of the Mandel piece)
 Develop the ratio of the # of ads and app jobs for the last 4 years
(Hint: we’ll help with this)
 Ratio of # of tech jobs to total in the App Economy (Hint: need a very good and accurate history)
 Total jobs created based on employment spread effects (First hint: need an very good and accurate count of jobs to use create the multipliers and reality check against the standard government statistics. Second hint: reasonable to flamboyant)
15 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

Nationally how many jobs has the App Economy created?
 Mandel uses a very conservative estimate of 1.5 to estimate that for every app job there is another 0.5 jobs in the economy
 Result: almost 500,000 jobs since the iPhone was introduced in
2007
 Based on other studies of multipliers the multiple could be anywhere between 2.4 and 3.4
 Even at 1 additional job to every app job the number grows to
600,000 jobs created since the 2007
16 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

Where are these App Jobs?
 Answer: all across the U.S. Two-thirds are not in CA
 In Metro Area from NY, San Francisco to Miami and Houston (p.11)
 In States across the U.S. (p.120)
17 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

18 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org
Demo

The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine®
(HWOL) Data Series

Detailed data available from 2005 to present . . .w/most accurate occupational detail
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Currently Used and relied upon by:

20 States
 Numerous Federal Reserve
Banks
 Monthly media coverage throughout the U.S.
 Workforce Boards
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Companies/
Internat’l orgs
 Research Organizations
HWOL Sources for Detailed
Charts and Tables
19 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org

Contacts:
Jeanne Shu
212-339-0491
Jeanne.shu@conferenceboard.org
June Shelp
212-339-0369
June.shelp@conferenceboard.org
20 © 2012 The Conference Board, Inc. | www.conferenceboard.org