Overview

Introduction

The Career Coach UK Careers API is a RESTful service providing economic and labor market data for all careers in the UK Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. The API supports flexible queries, allowing access to both general (national) and region-specific career data. All endpoints follow a JSON:API-like format, with a top-level data object containing objects or arrays with type, id, and attributes.

Support: Please contact your Lightcast / Career Coach account manager for technical or customer support regarding API use.

Data Overview

The UK Careers API provides comprehensive data for 412 careers defined in the SOC system.

There are two types of data available through this API:

• General Career Data: Metadata about a career collected at the national level.
• Region-Specific Career Data: Data that varies depending on the geographic region specified in your query.

Below is an exhaustive list of career attributes, with region-specific attributes noted accordingly.

Career Attributes

• age (regional) – Percentage breakdown of employment by age group. Sources include the Labour Force Survey (LFS).
• annual-earnings (regional) – Earnings at the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles. Based on the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) datasets.
• annual-openings (regional) – The number of annual job openings for the career in the region, including growth and replacement needs. Replacement rates come from Working Futures.
• categories – A list of categories that the career belongs to (Lightcast proprietary classification).
• core-tasks – A list of core or essential tasks necessary to the career. Provided by ONS.
• core-tasks-past-tense – Past tense version of core tasks, provided by ONS.
• description – The official SOC description of the career, provided by ONS.
• education-attainment-levels – Educational attainment percentage breakdown for a career (e.g., Bachelor’s vs. Associate degrees), based on LFS.
• educational-requirements – Entry-level education requirements for the career, provided by ONS.
• employment (regional) – The number of jobs in the career for the past two years, current year, and projections for the next 10 years. Counts include employed and self-employed persons, without distinction between full- and part-time work. Sources include LFS, Working Futures, and Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES).
• employment-current (regional) – The number of jobs in the current year, based on the same sources as above.
• hourly-earnings (regional) – Current hourly earnings by percentile, based on ASHE datasets.
• knowledge – A list of knowledge categories, including name, description, importance score, and level relative to the occupation.
• median-earnings (regional) – Median (50th percentile) annual earnings, based on ASHE.
• national-lq (regional) – The concentration of jobs for the career in a region compared to national concentration.
• pathways – A list of pathways that the career belongs to (Lightcast proprietary methodology).
• percent-female (regional) – Percentage of workers who are female, based on LFS.
• percent-male (regional) – Percentage of workers who are male, based on LFS.
• similar-occs – A list of 0–10 SOC IDs considered similar using Lightcast’s compatibility formula.
• singular-title – The singular (de-pluralized) version of the career title.
• skills – A list of skills relevant to the occupation, including name, description, importance, and level.
• soc-id – The SOC identifier for the career.
• title – The official SOC career title.
• title-slug – A slugified version of the singular title (e.g., chartered-accountant).

Career Categories and Pathways

This API provides both career category and pathway collections.

Each category or pathway has:

• An id
• A name
• A description
• A list of associated careers

Pathways can be considered sub-categories of categories. For example, all pathways that start with 1 are children of category 1.

O*NET Information

This API includes information from O*NET OnLine by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. Lightcast has modified some or all of this information; USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications.

Resource Structure

Each route in this API is prefixed by /careers/uk. The API provides access to the following collections:

• All Careers
• Single Career by SOC ID or Title Slug
• All Categories
• Single Category by ID
• All Pathways
• Single Pathway by ID
• Career Search

Careers Structure: /careers/uk/{level}/{geoId}

Available Geography Levels (level):

• nation – UK as a whole
• country – Country within the UK (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland)
• NUTS1 – NUTS 1 regions
• NUTS3 – NUTS 3 regions
• LAU1 – Local Authority Units

Example: /careers/uk/nuts1/UKC - NUTS1 region UKC (London)

For a single career:

• /careers/uk/nuts1/UKC/2421 (by SOC ID)
• /careers/uk/nuts1/UKC/title/chartered-and-certified-accountants (by title slug)

Note: The fields query key is required on every careers route.

Category and Pathway Collections:

• /careers/uk/categories → all categories
• /careers/uk/categories/{categoryId} → single category
• /careers/uk/pathways → all pathways
• /careers/uk/pathways/{pathwayId} → single pathway

API Endpoint

There are multiple endpoints within this category. Refer to individual API docs under the Career Coach UK Careers section.

Request Headers

Authentication

All endpoints require an OAuth 2.0 Bearer Token for authentication. Tokens are granted through Lightcast’s Authentication API and are valid for 1 hour.

To access the Career Coach UK Careers API, the token must include the following scope:

• careers:uk (for expanded access)

Sample Request

curl --request POST \
  --url https://auth.emsicloud.com/connect/token \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
  --data 'client_id=<CLIENT_ID>' \
  --data 'client_secret=<CLIENT_SECRET>' \
  --data grant_type=client_credentials \
  --data scope=careers:uk

Request Parameters

Sample Response

{
  "access_token": "<ACCESS_TOKEN>",
  "expires_in": 3600,
  "token_type": "Bearer"
}

Tokens expire after 3600 seconds. To maintain uninterrupted access, refresh the token before it expires. See the Authentication guide for details.

Response Parameters

Status Code Summary

Versioning

The Career Coach UK Careers API is currently at version 1.0. New data updates, fields, and minor hotfixes may be added at any time and are not considered breaking changes.

Data is typically refreshed once per quarter as new economic information becomes available. Clients will be notified when new data or features are released.

In the rare event that a version is deprecated, clients will receive at least 90 days’ notice to update their queries to the new format.