FY20 Statement of Need Labor Market Data.pdf

Bureau of Economic Analysis Statement of Need

For the Purchase of Labor Market Data to Improve the National Accounts

Section 1- Introduction/Background

BEA, as the nation’s accountant and one of the world’s leading statistical agencies, collects source data, conducts research and analysis, develops and implements estimation methodologies and disseminates statistics to the public. In this role, BEA collects source data from many specific sectors of the economy.

BEA requires “big data” to conduct research to improve the accuracy and relevance of GDP and its components and to better understand shifts in economic activity as a result of the current novel coronavirus pandemic. BEA is conducting research to expand the scope and improve the accuracy of intellectual property product measures in the National Income and Product Accounts. Intellectual property products are a category of capital formation in the NIPAs and have been shown historically to be an important source of economic growth for the U.S.

economy. A rapidly emerging area of intellectual property products is the strategic use of “data as an asset” in business models and economic activity. Research to develop estimates of “data as an asset” in BEA’s accounts will provide more accurate and relevant time series to policy makers and other data users to model the U.S. economy and analyze the extent of any structural changes to intellectual property products and U.S. economic activity as a result of the current novel coronavirus pandemic. In addition to estimating “data as an asset” as a new category of intellectual property products, our work plan includes using the Burning Glass data to estimate and compare with existing measures of intellectual property products for categories such as computer software and R&D expenditures.

The objective of this procurement is to obtain historical data on labor markets.

Section 2- Statement of Objectives

The data will be used to develop estimates of flows and stocks of business own-account “data as an asset” that are currently not possible with existing data sources. The foundation of the estimates will be labor costs associated with data-related activities (e.g., collecting and analyzing data). The job posting textual data will be used to train an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to identify data-related tasks and the amount of time spent on each task for a given occupation. Those results will then be matched to the structured data file, which contains information such as occupational classification, job location, and industrial classification. The matched data can then be used to supplement official data on occupational employment and average salaries to estimate aggregate labor costs as well as labor costs by industry and geographic location.

Section 3 – Technical Specifications and Deliverables

Historical labor market data for 2010-2019: text of actual job postings collected from companies’ websites, job aggregators, and other sources and structured file with data elements that have been extracted from the job postings.

The deliverables will include 10 years of data (i.e., 2010-2019) for both datasets: job postings and structured files. The data will be provided electronically through an FTP site.

• The structured file should include ad-level records:

o company name o job title, occupation o location o industry o skills requirements o certification o educational requirements o some salaries o uses codes such as standard occupational classification (SOC) codes, NAICS codes, and BLS ONET task codes. Thus, there is no need for us to match to external information that will be necessary to construct our estimates.

• Vendor should perform data validation checks/algorithms and best practices to prevent a job duplication.

Section 4 - Delivery Schedule: Data is to be delivered within 10 business days from date of award.

Section 5 - Contracting Officer Representative (COR)/Contracting Officer Technical Representative (COR)

A. CONTRACTING OFFICER’S REPRESENTATIVE (COR)

Tameka Harris is hereby designated as the Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR). The COR may be changed at any time by the Government without prior notice to the contractor by a unilateral modification to the contract.

The COR is located at:

Bureau of Economic Analysis 4600 Silver Hill road Suitland, MD 20746 Email: Tameka.harris@bea.gov Phone #: (301) 278-9542