LMI-Learning - Labour Market Information - Online Learning Modules - NGRF

As someone who teaches Labour Market Studies on the Post grad qualification in career guidance (at University of East London) I have been startled to hear that Labour Market Information and/or Labour Market Intelligence is no longer a part of careers training - because it is no longer part of career practice. I teach Labour Market Studies with a colleague from within the Centre for Training in Career Guidance and another colleague who works in the field. Last month (January 2005) we ran a focus group with our second year part time students to find out what they really thought of LMI as a topic within their Post grad diploma in career guidance; nearly all had been nervous of tackling LMI - and found it quite a challenge, but really enjoyed it. What seemed to spur them on was their understanding that turning Labour Market Information into Labour Market Intelligence was worthwhile in terms of what they could then pass on to their clients. As motivation, this worked equally well with those students who work with clients already as with those who hope to secure employment in career guidance on (successful) completion of the course. We give our students: the economic background; introduce them to sources of LMI (including this forum which has proved a very rich seam of information and intelligence); work with them to make sense of the information they access (identfying trends, putting data into local/regional/national context) and then we assess what they have done. This used to be an essay, but it is now to produce a labour market report for their peers in the community of practice: an article of the kind they would find in a professional journal - or on this site! How do you make sense of information at local/regional/national level both for your own use and, if you are a career guidance practitioner, for your clients to make use of? Or don't you bother? Is labour market intelligence integral to practice: or a luxury we can't afford?