The Global Standard in Skills
Comprehensive, transparent, and ready to use.
Our collection of 34,000+ skills comes from real-world use cases, honed by in-house experts, so you don't have to create a list yourself or rely on one you can't trust.
With Skills, Everyone Speaks The Same Language.
In a complex labor market where skill needs change fast, internal skill labels are inconsistent, and official classifications are often too slow or too broad, Lightcast provides the global standard in skills. Our taxonomy is the universal language that makes occupations and skills comparable across datasets, organizations, industries, and geographies.
Our dedicated team of taxonomists and engineers cleans, checks, and updates each entry so that you always have the most accurate and up-to-date picture of the labor market.
Lightcast Skills Are Open.
The Lightcast Skills Taxonomy is built for transparency. Our methodology, changelog, and skill suggestions forum are publicly available, so anyone can see how the taxonomy is created and how it evolves.
By keeping both the process and structure visible, Lightcast keeps the taxonomy collaborative, accountable, and closely aligned with real-world skill needs.
Ready to get started?
Standardize and clarify your strategy with our taxonomy of over 34,000 skills. Each has a unique machine-readable identifier and has been identified in real-world job postings and profiles, refined by our human experts.
We're Creating A Job Market That Works For Everyone.
Are you a nonprofit who wants to use Lightcast Skills in support of a public good? We'd love to help. When you register to use Lightcast Skills, we'll set you up with full access, free of charge.
Lightcast Skills Taxonomy: Under the Hood
Lightcast Skills is created by a team of economists and labor market analysts who have worked with real-time labor market data for over 20 years. Nobody knows skills better.
We’ve gathered over 33,000 skills from hundreds of millions of online job postings and profiles from multiple sources—more than any other data provider. We also meticulously clean up and fact-check each skill before adding it to the library.
Every skill has its own unique page in the Lightcast Skills Taxonomy. Each page displays related skills, the top job titles and top companies posting for that skill, the job postings trend line over the last twelve months, and live job postings that you can click into to view that skill in real time (and most also have a Wikipedia definition for further clarity). Here's an example page for Javascript Programming Language Skills.
Skill categories and subcategories act as a way to logically group the skills in our library and create a hierarchy to easily view related skills. Categories are broad areas of expertise that map to career areas, and subcategories provide a group of skills specific to performing a specific aspect of a job. Learn more about Lightcast data taxonomies.
We’re constantly updating our skills library so it reflects the latest changes in the labor market. We add new skills, remove old ones, and tidy up terminology as necessary. Don’t see a skill? Suggest a new one here!
Visit our Open Skills FAQ page for more detail on what Lightcast offers and how it works.
Try it out! Explore the tools on this page to see what the Lightcast Skills Taxonomy can do.
Skills Library
Looking for a specific skill? Search our library for free. Explore 34,000+ skills that we’ve collected from hundreds of millions of job postings, resumes, and online profiles.
Skill Categories
No skill exists on its own: explore our 30+ skill categories as a way to logically group the skills in our library and create a hierarchy to easily view related skills.
Skills Extractor
Our skills tools can parse text to identify useful and in-demand skills in your job postings, resumes, or syllabi. Make sure you're speaking the language of the labor market: it's free to use.
More To Explore
Our skills solutions go beyond the taxonomy. Everyone involved with the labor market at any level—from individuals and educators to communities and businesses—can put skills to work. There's more to explore.
