The ZipRecruiter Skills Index measures the value of different job skills on a scale from 0 to 100 and includes data on 1,466 skills from more than 30 million ZipRecruiter job postings in 2017 and 2018.
Tech and healthcare skills dominate the list for 2018, with software engineering coming in first place with a score of 88. Other skills that made it into the top 100 were renewable energy expertise, mechanical engineering, and trucking.
User instructions: The skills in the index are sorted by the overall score from highest to lowest by default. The overall index score is a composite that provides a holistic view of the demand for each skill. Index components may also be sorted in ascending or descending order to determine demand based on the individual metrics (i.e. which skills have the fastest job growth or fetch the highest salary).
Methodology: The index uses skills requirement data from more than 30 million job postings in the ZipRecruiter employment marketplace from 2017 and 2018.
The overall index score is a weighted sum of the percentile ranks of the four indicators associated with each skill. The formula is:
Score = .2 x Annual Job Growth + .2 x Geographic Breadth + .2 x Job Prevalence + .4 x Median Salary
The indicators are defined as follows:
Annual Job Growth: The growth rate in the number of jobs desiring the skill between 2017 and 2018.
Geographic Breadth: The percentage of metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the U.S. where jobs desiring a skill were located during the period.
Job Prevalence: A percentile rank assigned to each skill based on the number of jobs that require the skill relative to the number of jobs mentioning other skills in the index.
Median Salary: The median minimum of the salary range employers provided on job postings desiring the skill.
