Networking tops the list of desirable skills
By a wide margin the skill rising the most in popularity among employers is networking skills. This is the first time all year we have seen this skill appear at the top of the list. It may be because of the kinds of roles that are hiring right now, but it may also be that modern work, regardless of the industry, requires much more collaboration and trust-building. In the future, this is just the kind of soft skill that may make or break an employee’s success.
Job openings requiring bachelor’s degrees are increasing at the fastest rate, but not at the entry-level
It is encouraging to see that white-collar roles for applicants with bachelor’s degrees are on the upswing compared to last fall. Candidates with a BA/BS and more than 5 years of relevant work experience can choose from 25% more job openings than at this time last year. However, early-career white collar roles for those with an undergraduate degree and no practical experience only increased by 7% over the same period, lagging behind the rest of the job market.
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.
