Skills in online job ads: an analysis of Italian regions

Economists and other social scientists are increasingly leveraging web data to tackle socio-economic issues and integrate existing sources of information. The data generated by online platforms and websites offer a wealth of multidimensional information with diverse potential applications in economic analysis. Online job advertisement data, for instance, allows us to enhance our understanding of the labour market by providing timely insights into business demand and the skills required for various job positions. This paper examines skill similarities at the regional level in Italy and the variations in skills sought by businesses over time using Lightcast data for 2019 and 2020. In light of this, we use two measures related to the regional skill similarities, an index for the regional skill changes, jointly with some features of the local economy, in order to provide a picture of Italian regions.