Triangle Region Workforce Intelligence Portals & Data Sources
Rapid Research Brief

Executive Summary

Key Takeaways

• Start with LEAD's Supply-Demand Dashboard — it's the closest free equivalent to answering "how much demand is there?" with direct supply/demand ratios by occupation and region.
• For actual job posting counts at scale, the NLx Research Hub is the premier free option — but requires a formal application. If Duke/NCCU is doing nonprofit workforce research, this is directly in their authorized use case.
• NCWorks + LEAD D4 together give you: what's being posted now (NCWorks), what it pays (OEWS in D4), and what the outlook is (projections in D4).
• BLS QCEW + OEWS are the authoritative backbone — all other sources derive from these. Building a clean ETL pipeline to these is a solid foundation.
• For "job fluidity," Census LEHD is the answer — QWI gives you hiring, separations, turnover by quarter. LODES gives you worker-flow geography. No free alternative comes close.
• The gap without Lightcast is real-time skills analytics and standardized job posting taxonomies across multiple boards. NLx fills the volume gap but not the taxonomic normalization that Lightcast provides.

Key Findings

1 Finding 1: NC State Infrastructure — 7 Primary Portals

North Carolina's Department of Commerce LEAD program provides a comprehensive free backbone for workforce intelligence. NCWorks Online (ncworks.gov) serves live job postings searchable by region, occupation, and industry, with embedded LMI wage data. The LEAD Supply-Demand Dashboard directly compares labor supply vs. demand by region — exactly the metric needed for workforce planning. The LEAD D4 system offers deep-dive occupational data including OEWS-based wages and 10-year projections. LEAD Star Jobs rates occupations 1–5 stars based on wages, growth, and openings. The NC Open Data Portal (data.nc.gov) provides Socrata SODA API access to monthly labor force data, employment by NAICS, and business establishment data — the best option for programmatic pipelines. Regional Labor Market Overviews publish monthly dashboards for the Capital Area WDB (Wake, Johnston, Chatham, Lee, Orange) and Durham WDB. NCcareers.org rounds out the state offering with occupation profiles showing wages, education requirements, and demand indicators.

2 Finding 2: Regional & Local Sources — Triangle-Specific Granularity

The Tier 2 layer adds local specificity. Work In The Triangle provides industry sector overviews and employer directories for the region's tech, life sciences, and higher-ed clusters. Capital Area Workforce Development (CAWD) conducts Regional Skills Analysis surveys (2017, 2020, 2023) in partnership with Wake County Economic Development and RTI International — the only free source of employer-reported skills gaps in the Triangle. CAWD also publishes monthly labor market overviews. Wake County Workforce Development, Raleigh Municipal Careers (with salary ranges), and NC State Government Jobs (Workday) provide public-sector demand signals, with state government postings concentrated in the Triangle.

3 Finding 3: Federal APIs & Authoritative Datasets

The Tier 3 sources provide programmatic access and the gold-standard baselines all other analyses derive from. NLx Research Hub (DirectEmployers/NASWA) is the closest free equivalent to Lightcast — millions of real-time and historical job postings, accessible to approved researchers. O*NET Web Services and CareerOneStop Web API offer RESTful programmatic access to occupational profiles with skills, knowledge, and abilities taxonomies. The BLS QCEW/OEWS/LAUS datasets are the authoritative backbone: actual employment counts by NAICS + county, wages by occupation, and unemployment by county — all via free API and bulk downloads. Census LEHD is the premier source for job fluidity: QWI for hiring, separations, and turnover by quarter; LODES for worker commuting flows showing where workers live vs. work.

4 Finding 4: 4-Layer Intelligence Architecture

Based on this landscape, a Triangle workforce intelligence hub could layer: Layer 1 — Demand Signals (NCWorks for live postings, NLx for volume, CareerOneStop API for occupational demand); Layer 2 — Supply-Demand Balance (LEAD Supply-Demand Dashboard for seeker-per-opening ratios, LEAD D4 for projections, BLS QCEW/OEWS for authoritative baselines); Layer 3 — Job Fluidity & Movement (Census LEHD QWI for hiring/turnover rates, LEHD LODES for commuting flows); Layer 4 — Skills & Occupations (O*NET Web Services for skills taxonomies, CAWD RSA surveys for employer-identified gaps, LEAD Star Jobs for high-ROI occupation identification). BLS QCEW + OEWS should anchor the ETL pipeline — everything else layers on top.

5 Finding 5: The Lightcast Gap — What Free Sources Miss

Commercial products fill three gaps the free stack cannot: real-time skills analytics that parse individual job postings for specific skill mentions (versus O*NET's static occupation-level taxonomy), cross-board posting deduplication (patented by Lightcast), and configurable API-driven dashboards (versus the LEAD dashboards' web-only monthly snapshots). NLx fills the volume gap but not the taxonomic normalization. For most workforce intelligence use cases, the free stack covers 80–90% of commercial functionality. Commercial alternatives to monitor include Lightcast (enterprise), Chmura (enterprise), LinkUp (paid tiers), JobDataAPI (paid tiers), and BrightData's Job Postings Dataset on Databricks Marketplace (free 1,000-row sample).

Risks, Gaps & Uncertainty

• Gap: No public API for NCWorks. Bulk job posting data requires a data-sharing agreement with NC Commerce — web scraping may be the only programmatic option in the interim.
• Gap: NLx requires formal application. While Duke/NCCU workforce research qualifies, the turnaround time and exact scope-matching criteria are unknown.
• Gap: No free real-time skills analytics. O*NET is occupation-level and static. No free source parses individual job postings for dynamic skill mentions.
• Risk: LEAD dashboards are web-only. No documented API endpoints — fragile for automated pipelines. Changes to NC Commerce infrastructure could break scrapers.
• Risk: CAWD RSA surveys are triennial. The 2017, 2020, 2023 cadence may not capture rapidly shifting employer skill needs. The next survey (expected 2026) timing is unknown.
• Unresolved: NLx authorization scope. Whether Duke/NCCU's specific workforce research project falls within NLx's "discrete nonprofit research projects" authorization category requires direct confirmation.

Recommended Next Actions

Annotated References