Analyzing GFOA job board data from June 2020 through December 2023—with more than 5,400 postings—has helped GFOA better understand the distribution and characteristics of the job openings. Questions that guided the analysis include:
- Which job titles are most common?
- How do employers describe their open positions?
- What is the average wage being offered?
- How do wages differ across job titles?
- How do wages differ across geographical regions?
- How do wages differ across government types?
Because of the lack of standardization in how the data was collected and the sheer size of the data set, it was necessary to clean and categorize the data programmatically—which implies that our analysis and findings are probably affected by some measurement error. But the approach taken was more than rigorous enough to accomplish the purpose of the analysis—that is, identifying and concisely communicating the quantitative and qualitative shape of the GFOA’s job board postings. What follows is a synopsis of our findings.
- Publication date: June 2024
- Authors: Samuel Mann and Mark Mack