Overview

Introduction

The Career Coach US Jobs API is a RESTful service providing aggregated data from millions of job postings across online sources. It delivers insights into recent job availability, hiring companies, and in-demand skills across the United States. All endpoints follow a JSON:API-like format, with a top-level data object containing objects or arrays with type, id, and attributes.

While careers represent long-term occupations (e.g., Web Developer, O*NET 15-1254.00), jobs represent specific positions at a time and place (e.g., Web Developer role at Lightcast in Moscow, ID). Using the Jobs API together with the Careers API provides a full picture: long-term occupational context alongside current job demand.

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

Data Overview

The API features three main datasets:

1. Timeseries of Job Postings – Number of unique job postings per month, total unique postings, and total companies posting, filtered by region, career (O*NET code), and time period.
2. Companies Posting Jobs – List of companies posting jobs for a specified region, career, and time period.
3. Skills Data – List of hard and soft skills associated with a given career, with the number of unique postings requiring each skill, filtered by region, career, and time period.

All queries require specifying an O*NET code, geographic region(s), and a date range.

O*NET Information

This page 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 all or some of this information. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications.

Resource Structure

The main collections in this API have routes prefixed by /jobs. Additionally, there is a separate skill search endpoint: /skill-search.

The API provides access to the following collections:

• Timeseries
• Companies
• Skills
• Skill Search

The structure for each collection is:

/jobs/us/{geographyLevel}/{geographyID}/{careerCode}/{collection}

Available geography levels:

• nation
• state
• msa
• county
• zip – ZIP code data is derived from county data

Example:

/jobs/us/msa/35620/13-2011.01/timeseries

Breakdown:

• /us/msa/35620 – Metropolitan Statistical Area code for New York City
• /13-2011.01 – O*NET code for accountants
• /timeseries – Monthly job postings collection (default past 6 months if unspecified)

API Endpoint

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

Request Headers

(*) Indicates the action to be required

All requests must include the following 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 Jobs API, the token must include the following scope:

• jobs (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=jobs

Request Parameters

Sample Response

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

Note that tokens expire after 3600 seconds. To maintain uninterrupted access, refresh the token before it expires. To know more about this, refer to the Authentication guide.

Response Parameters

curl --request GET \
--url 'https://cc.emsiservices.com/jobs/us/msa/41860/15-1252.00/skills?limit=10' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>'

{
  "data": {
    "attributes": {
      "date-range": {
        "start": "2017-12",
        "end": "2018-06",
        "months": 6,
        "context": "6 months"
      },
      "skills": [
        { "name": "Java (Programming Language)", "unique-postings": 7057 },
        { "name": "Software Development", "unique-postings": 4537 },
        { "name": "JavaScript (Programming Language)", "unique-postings": 4532 },
        { "name": "Software Engineering", "unique-postings": 3765 },
        { "name": "Agile Software Development", "unique-postings": 3605 },
        { "name": "SQL (Programming Language)", "unique-postings": 3272 },
        { "name": "Software Engineer", "unique-postings": 2912 },
        { "name": "Python (Programming Language)", "unique-postings": 2806 },
        { "name": "Amazon Web Services", "unique-postings": 2621 },
        { "name": "Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)", "unique-postings": 2512 }
      ],
      "onet-id": "15-1252.00",
      "total-unique-postings": 19427
    },
    "id": "15-1252.00",
    "type": "skills"
  }
}

Status Code Summary

Versioning

The Career Coach US Jobs 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.