World Bank researchers partner Babajob for labor market analysis

The researchers from the World Bank are partnering with Babajob.com which lists jobs for informal and entry-level formal job seekers to get new insights into labor market policy making.

The World Bank team is bringing in technical expertise for labor market analysis to get a deeper understanding of how job and skills matching happens, and how can it be improved.

It is a first attempt to use business data for conducting labor market research and producing policy-relevant evidence. 

The joint research agenda includes multiple dimensions of the labor market assessment, including India’s labor market trends related to seasonal trends, skills demand and supply, behavior and motivation of job seekers, and wage differences by gender, occupation and location, etc.

As a part of this partnership, Babajob.com is providing access to data collected through its operations over the past 7 years. This includes records of more than 7 million job seekers, 450,000 employers, 1 million job posts with more than 6 million vacancies, and an average of 450,000 applications per month made by job seekers. 

“As India’s most active employment platform focusing on jobs with an average salary of about Rs 10,000 a month, we have vast amounts of data on job seekers and available employment opportunities in this sector. We believe that analysis of this data can significantly benefit many stakeholders in our space, especially the government and the skills development industry, and we are committed to democratizing this data for the benefit of all,” said Vir Kashyap, Co-Founder at Babajob.com.

“Big data could provide a novel opportunity to inform labor market and education policies. Unlike traditional sample surveys, it provides real time information about the labor market with more detail and granularity,” said Shinsaku Nomura, Senior Economist at the World Bank.

The Government of India is trying to address this by investing heavily in skill development through large-scale initiatives that aim to train 500 million people by 2022.  By using Babajob.com’s data, the team hopes to generate more relevant information about skills demand which can be used for demand-driven skills development of the country.