Using External Labor Market Data To Identify Skills Gaps
The global labor market is in flux. Talent shortages in AI, cybersecurity, sustainability, and advanced manufacturing – to give some examples – are intensifying, while new technologies and business models are transforming the skills organizations need to compete. Nearly 83% of human resources leaders say they struggle to find enough talent with the necessary skills, while 57% say skills shortages are undermining their ability to sustain corporate performance (Gartner).
For HR and business leaders, relying on internal data alone is no longer enough. Organizations risk overestimating current capabilities, underestimating market demand, and missing opportunities to deploy talent where it matters most.
That’s why using external labor data to identify skills gaps is critical today. By combining internal insights with labor market trends, companies can uncover where to hire, reskill, upskill, or redeploy – and make workforce decisions that are timely, strategic, and future-proof.
Skills Gap Analysis 101
A skills gap analysis evaluates the difference between the skills your workforce currently possesses and the skills your business will require to meet its strategic goals. Traditionally, this analysis relies heavily on internal data: job descriptions, employee profiles, performance records, and learning history. While internal data is critical, it only tells part of the story.
Without a broader market perspective, organizations risk underestimating demand for emerging skills or misaligning talent development priorities. That’s where external labor market data comes in.
Why External Labor Market Data Changes the Game
External labor data captures the real-time dynamics of the workforce outside your organization. It can reveal:
- Emerging skills that competitors are hiring for
- Geographic areas with talent shortages or surpluses
- Salary benchmarks and market demand trends
By combining external data with their internal insights about people and work, organizations gain a holistic view of skills supply and demand. This makes decisions about hiring, reskilling, or redeployment far more accurate and forward-looking.
The Talent Data You Need
A robust skills gap analysis depends on the quality — and connectivity — of your data. To see the full picture of your organization’s capabilities, you need to integrate three key sources: internal data on people, internal data on work, and external labor market insights. Together, they reveal not only what skills your workforce has today, but how those skills are being applied and where new ones will be needed.
Internal data on people
This is the foundation of any workforce analysis. Skills Intelligence brings together data from across your HR systems to create a dynamic, accurate view of your employees’ capabilities. It typically includes:
- Employee profiles, resumes, and career histories
- Learning and certification records
- Performance, mobility, and engagement data
By unifying this data, organizations can identify what skills exist internally – and where they are underutilized or unevenly distributed.
Internal data on work
While skills data tells you what your people can do, Task Intelligence reveals how those skills are being used day to day. This layer of data connects job roles to the specific tasks, projects, and activities that drive business outcomes. It can show:
- Which tasks are becoming more automated or augmented by AI
- Where critical workflows depend on scarce expertise
- How work is evolving across functions or geographies
By analyzing work patterns and task data, organizations can detect emerging gaps early, and more easily find the right talent to fill those gaps.
External data
Bringing in Talent Market Insights expands the lens beyond your organization, offering visibility into global and local workforce trends. This includes:
- Job postings across industries and regions
- Benchmark data on salaries, demand, and supply for specific roles
- Emerging skill trends
These insights help organizations understand how their internal capabilities compare to the wider market, where competition for key skills is intensifying, and which new capabilities are rising in demand.
When connected through a unified workforce intelligence platform, these three data sources create a single, dynamic map of your organization’s strengths, risks, and opportunities — enabling smarter, faster decisions about hiring, upskilling, and redeployment.
Step-by-Step: Using External Labor Data To Run A Smarter Skills Gap Analysis
- Define strategic objectives: Clarify which business initiatives will drive future talent needs. Are you launching new products, expanding into new markets, or adopting emerging technologies? This ensures your skills gap analysis is aligned with strategic priorities.
- Assess internal skills: Inventory existing workforce capabilities to understand your current skills supply. Capture employee profiles, certifications, career history, and performance data. This gives a baseline view of where your organization is strong – and where gaps may exist.
- Understand tasks: Analyze the work employees actually perform to uncover hidden gaps or underutilized expertise. Identify which critical tasks are being performed by too few people, and which workflows could be at risk if key skills become scarce.
- Gather external labor data: Expand the lens to include external labor market trends, skills availability, and geographic supply constraints. External data shows where your internal skills align – or fall short – compared to the broader market.
- Map gaps: Combine insights from internal skills, task data, and external labor trends to identify missing or underrepresented skills. This creates a clear picture of which capabilities are critical to business objectives but in short supply internally.
- Prioritize interventions: Decide the most strategic actions: hire for immediate gaps, upskill employees for emerging needs, reskill talent for new roles, or redeploy existing employees to high-priority projects. Data-driven insights make these decisions more confident and precise.
- Monitor continuously: Skills needs evolve rapidly. Keep your skills gap analysis up-to-date by continuously monitoring workforce intelligence to make sure insights remain actionable over time.
Doing all of this manually – mapping skills, tasks, and external market trends in real time – is virtually impossible. The right AI-powered tools are essential to automate, connect, and interpret these complex data layers, turning insights into actionable workforce decisions.
Use Cases: How Organizations Apply Skills Gap Insights
Once internal skills, task data, and external labor trends are connected, organizations can turn insights into action in multiple ways. For example, companies struggling to hire for scarce skills can identify where demand is highest and adjust recruitment strategies accordingly, ensuring the right talent is brought in at the right time.
Predictive insights also make targeted reskilling programs more effective. By understanding which skills are rising in demand externally, organizations can upskill employees proactively, preparing teams for new technologies or emerging roles before gaps become critical.
Similarly, redeployment strategies benefit from this intelligence: employees with surplus or underutilized skills can be shifted to high-priority projects, reducing bottlenecks and maximizing internal capacity.
Finally, combining internal and external data supports strategic workforce planning. Organizations can anticipate technological shifts and emerging roles, aligning talent allocation with business priorities and minimizing the risk of disruption.
Across all these use cases, the integration of skills intelligence, task intelligence, and external labor market insights ensures that workforce decisions are data-driven, timely, and future-proof.