By Allen Blue
LinkedIn’s vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Notice that I said every member, not just white collar workers with four-year college degrees. Everyone.
To achieve our vision, we’re building the world’s first Economic Graph — a digital map of the global economy that includes every member of the global workforce and their skills, all open jobs, all employers, and all educational institutions. We’ve been sharing labor market insights from the Economic Graph with dozens of policymakers across the globe to help create greater economic opportunity.
For example, we’ve been sharing Economic Graph insights with policymakers in Colorado and Phoenix. We realized the combination of our Economic Graph insights and the LinkedIn platform can have an even greater economic impact. So last June we joined Skillful (formerly Rework America Connected) — a Markle Foundation initiative to help workers in Colorado and Phoenix with high school diplomas and some or no college education acquire new skills to advance their careers.
This is important because more than 40% of workers in Colorado, and nearly 50% of workers in Arizona, have a high school diploma and some or no college education. Yet 44% of the more than 468 recruiters and hiring managers we surveyed in Colorado and Phoenix in February said it’s hard to find people with the right technical skills. Companies that have a hard time hiring are less productive, which stunts the growth of the local economy.
