Connecting Our Great Small Cities
A partnership between LinkedIn and the Regional Australia Institute is bringing the power of LinkedIn’s data to leaders in Australia’s regional cities. LinkedIn is the world’s leading professional platform with over 9 million users in Australia and 500 million worldwide.
LinkedIn and the Regional Australia Institute have delved into eight regional cities to understand how the skills mix is evolving, how professionals are connected within and outside the cities, and which skill sets are most in demand.
The eight cities are Townsville, Sunshine Coast – Noosa, Greater Newcastle, Greater Wollongong, Launceston, in report 1 and Darwin, Geelong and Hobart in report 2.
Powerful analysis tool for small cities
We have pushed the boundaries of analysis on LinkedIn’s membership to test just how far we can go in mapping skills and networks in smaller places. We have found that the depth of LinkedIn membership is so strong that robust analysis is possible in cities with populations around 60,000 people.
Connected cities
Overall, the average number of connections per member increases with the size of the city. But every city has a mix of local connections, national connections and international connections. It is this break down of data that the Australian government is particularly interested in when measuring city performance.
Skilled cities
LinkedIn also provides a unique data set of individual skills – not qualifications (which is what most data measures), but actual skills that are demanded for on the job performance. Healthcare management was a top five skill, as was IT infrastructure and system management, and education and teaching.
We also see that the skills with the highest mobility are a mix of hard skills (e.g. software engineering, social media marketing) and soft skills (business development and relationship management, management and leadership) for our eight cities.
The findings from this partnership have already fired up leaders in the regional cities across Australia. The information is almost real time, and provides great insight into the nature of connections and, by extension, business flows within and outside these cities. This is a rich information base to help regional leaders understand more about the cutting edges of their economies, and what they need to do to support growth and create economic opportunity for their part of the global workforce.
LinkedIn and the Regional Australia Institute are excited to continue our partnership, so stay tuned for more leading edge insights coming your way soon or get in contact if you want to be the next LinkedIn connected city.
