How well do you know your local labour market? Are you familiar with the types of jobs on offer locally and the sector areas that are likely to grow in the future? Do you know which skills local employers are looking for?

Having a good overall picture of local job opportunities and skills needs is useful knowledge for young people in schools and colleges who are making important decisions about their future careers. In England, schools and colleges must provide good quality careers and labour market information as part of the Gatsby Benchmarks requirements (Benchmark 2). Careers leaders and careers advisers, however, will be familiar with the difficulties this can sometimes pose – it can be hard to find suitable content to share with students, parents, carers and teachers.

While national or regional labour market information (LMI) is more readily available, local LMI suitable for a younger audience can be patchy across the nation.

The Know Your Local Job Market posters for 2023/4 are a perfect ‘quick win’ for introducing your local labour market to young people. Designed to be eye-catching with readability in mind, they highlight sectors or sub-sectors which are thriving in the local area and some of the jobs where skills are in high demand. These ‘in demand’ jobs are linked to current UK skills shortages, jobs we can expect to see lots of vacancies for in years to come.

The posters also show the ratio between those working full- and part-time contracts and average full-time weekly earnings which can vary hugely depending on the types of jobs people can access locally. It’s no secret that young people are very interested in how much jobs pay and it can be a good starting point for talking about jobs and careers. Comparing the difference between national and local pay and regional variations can help with career exploration and raising aspirations.

All of the local posters highlight the growing demand for higher skills. This is essential knowledge for young people who will see more job opportunities in their lifetime requiring a level 4 or above qualification than today’s workforce.

Students, parents and carers alike are more likely to engage with labour market information when presented in bitesize chunks and these posters – updated annually to ensure currency – are a good addition to any school or college’s LMI provision.

The Know Your Local Job Market posters are created by Helen Janota and can be purchased from Cre8tive Resources. They currently cover the areas of:

*Update* New areas added for:
Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly | Cumbria | Essex | Peterborough | Cambridgeshire | Warwickshire