Overview

Introduction

The Career Coach US Careers API is a RESTful service providing economic and labor market data for all careers in the O*NET database. 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 US Careers API provides comprehensive data for 974 careers defined in O*NET. 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

• abilities (regional) – The abilities associated with the career. “Importance” indicates how relevant the ability is to the occupation (scale 1–5), and “level” represents proficiency required (scale 0–100). Results are sorted by importance first, then level.
• age (regional) – A percentage breakdown of employment by age group. Sources include Lightcast industry demographics data, staffing patterns, and American Community Survey datasets.
• annual-earnings (regional) – Earnings at the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles. Based on Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
• annual-openings (regional) – The number of annual job openings for the career in the region, including both growth and replacement needs. Replacement rates are sourced from the BLS and Lightcast projections.
• categories – A list of categories that the career belongs to. (Equivalent to O*NET Clusters.)
• core-tasks – A list of core or essential tasks necessary to the career, as defined by _O_NET*.
• description – The generalized O*NET description of the career.
• education-attainment-levels – The educational attainment percentage breakdown for a career (e.g., the percentage of people in the career who hold Bachelor’s Degrees vs. Associate Degrees). Data is sourced from _O_NET*.
• employment (regional) – The number of jobs in the career for the past two years, the current year, and projections for the next ten years. Job counts include both employed and self-employed persons and do not distinguish between full- and part-time work. Sources include Lightcast industry data, staffing patterns, and OES.
• 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, calculated from OES annual figures divided by 2,080 hours.
• humanized-title – A simplified, user-friendly version of the O*NET career title.
• knowledge – The knowledge areas relevant to the career, with “importance” and “level” scores following the same scale as abilities.
• lay-titles – Alternate or lay titles associated with the O_NET occupation. (Equivalent to O_NET Alternate Titles.)
• median-earnings (regional) – The median (50th percentile) annual earnings for the career in the region, from OES datasets.
• mocs – Military occupations mapped to the civilian occupation, based on Lightcast’s proprietary mappings and service-branch datasets.
• national-lq (regional) – The concentration of jobs for the specified career in a region compared to its national concentration.
• onet-id – The O*NET ID for the career.
• pathways – A list of pathways that the career belongs to. (Equivalent to O*NET Pathways.)
• percent-female (regional) – The percentage of workers in the career who are female. Sources include Lightcast industry demographics data and American Community Survey datasets.
• percent-male (regional) – The percentage of workers in the career who are male. Sources include Lightcast industry demographics data and American Community Survey datasets.
• plural-short-title (general) – The pluralized, short title of the specific career.
• riasec-traits (general) – The different RIASEC personality traits associated with the specific career.
• short-title (general) – The short version of the career title.
• similar-occs – A list of careers that are similar to the given career code, mapped using O*NET data.
• singular-title – The singular (de-pluralized) version of the title property.
• skills – The skills associated with the career, using the same “importance” and “level” scoring model as abilities and knowledge.
• soc-id – The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) ID for the career.
• soc-title – The SOC title of the career.
• title – The official O*NET career title.
• title-slug – A slugified version of the singular title (e.g., chemical-technician).
• typical-ed-level – The most common education level for the career by percentage, as defined by _O_NET*.

Career Categories and Pathways

This API provides both career category and pathway collections. These are derived from O*NET Clusters and Pathways and adapted for Lightcast’s U.S. framework.

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.

Accessible Regions

The US Careers API supports queries across multiple geographic levels. You can view the regions available for query using the regions endpoint. Regional access depends on your contract; contact your Lightcast representative for expanded access.

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, and USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications.

Resource Structure

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

• All Careers
• Single Career by O*NET ID or Title Slug
• All Categories
• Single Category by ID
• All Pathways
• Single Pathway by ID
• Career Search

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

Available Geography Levels (level):

• nation – National-level data
• state – U.S. state
• msa – Metropolitan Statistical Area
• county – County-level data
• zip – ZIP code-level data

Example: /careers/us/msa/10100/13-2011.00 → MSA 10100 (Des Moines–West Des Moines, IA) for Accountants and Auditors.

For a single career:

• /careers/us/msa/10100/13-2011.00 (by O*NET ID), or
• /careers/us/msa/10100/title/accountants-and-auditors (by title slug).

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

Category and Pathway Collections:

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

API Endpoint

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

Request Headers

Authentication

All endpoints in this category 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 US Careers API, the token must include the following scope:

• careers:us (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:us

Request Parameters

Sample Response

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

Tokens expire after 3600 seconds. Refresh your token before it expires to maintain uninterrupted access. For more details, refer to the Authentication Guide.

Response Parameters

Status Code Summary

Versioning

The Career Coach US 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.