Introduction:

As a practitioner, you already know the crucial importance of high quality, reliable labour market information (LMI) for effective advice and guidance. Hopefully, you are already making good use of the National Guidance Research Forum Future Trends (make live link to: http://www.guidance-research.org/future-trends/ )section to access quality LMI. But of course whilst the coverage of the site is impressive, it will never be able to claim that it includes all existing labour market information.

It is particularly important to both to look more widely than local authority/unitary authority level (at broader sub-regions and regions) and to focus down at micro area levels (especially for certain disadvantaged groups) to get a more rounded picture.

This means that if you are serious about seeking out your own LMI you will need to develop a critical eye to determine what's hot and what's not in the world of LMI!

Some hints on what to look for:

1. Where has the LMI come from?

Where has the LMI come from - who is making the claim? There is a wide range of Labour Market Information in the public domain. Some of it is excellent, but before you accept any data uncritically you should ask yourself what are the aims and objectives of the organisation who has produced the literature.

2. How was the LMI collected?

This seems obvious, but does the LMI seem to have been collected in a reasonable way? This covers everything from geographical spread, age range, ethnic background to type of questioning used in the research.

3. Do the claims seem reasonable and proportionate to the research approach?

Does the research lead to broad generalisations or are they simply giving more modest illustrative case studies? This may call for a degree of critical thinking and common sense on your part.

4. When was the research carried out?

It's impossible to give any hard and fast rule in terms of when research might be considered to be past its use-by date.

5. Does the research echo with any other sources of information?

It can be helpful to get into the habit of always looking at more than one source of information for key data and noting similarities or differences.

Got something to say? Join a discussion on choosing between sources of LMI