The online job market trace in Latin America and the Caribbean

Jobs intermediated by online platforms have become a central pillar of labour markets in Latin America and the Caribbean. Public online platforms inevitably leave digital trace data that can be used as a source of information regarding online labour supply and demand. This report explores the opportunities and challenges of the systematic use of these publicly available data. The objective is to give an overview of the volume and nature of these data, and to share the lessons learned in order to develop a research agenda that enables alternative labour market information tools to be created, based on these new sources. To provide an initial analysis of the type of information that can be drawn from this data source, this report presents the main findings from data collected from six major international labour market platforms and two global freelancing sites in late 2019 and early 2020. These platforms are Acciontrabajo (Profdir), CompuTrabajo, Jobisjob, CaribbeanJobsOnline, CaribbeanJobs, and the two global freelancing sites are Freelancer and Upwork, covering 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.Introduction .-- I. Methodological considerations .-- II. Freelancing labour market .-- III. Domestic labour market .-- IV. Temporal dynamics .-- V. Further explorations .-- VI. Conclusions