Publication:
Piloting a Machine Learning-Based Job-Matching Algorithm: Summary of Results from Pomerania

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (651.21 KB)
171 downloads
English Text (73.14 KB)
18 downloads
Date
2023-11-20
ISSN
Published
2023-11-20
Author(s)
Gajderowicz, Tomasz
Editor(s)
Abstract
The objective of this note is to present and discuss the findings of piloting a task-based job matching tool developed by the World Bank and implemented in partnership with the Regional Labor Office of Pomerania, Poland. The aim of the pilot was to assess whether simple ML-based tools could contribute to improve the efficiency of PES delivery and job-seeking behaviors compared to rule-based, knowledge-driven approaches. By combining labor demand data from local occupational barometers and the descriptions of tasks in the national taxonomy of occupations, the tool provides jobseekers a menu of potential jobs available in the local labor markets that match the tasks performed in previous work experiences. Results show that jobseekers were satisfied with the proposed occupations resulting from the tool (as beyond their thinking) and had the intention to expand job search efforts, though job-seeking behaviors could not be monitored. Career advisers recognized that the lack of information on jobseekers’ education, skills, and preferences limited the efficiency of the proposed job matches.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Honorati, Maddalena; Gajderowicz, Tomasz. 2023. Piloting a Machine Learning-Based Job-Matching Algorithm: Summary of Results from Pomerania. Jobs Notes; Issue No.17. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/40628 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Who is Most Vulnerable to the Transition Away from Coal? Ruda Śląska Residents’ Preferences Towards Jobs and Land Repurposing
    (World Bank, 2023-05-24) Honorati, Maddalena; Gajderowicz, Tomasz
    After Germany, Poland is the EU’s second largest coal producer and consumer.1 96 percent of EU-27 hard coal production, or 54.4 million tons, is extracted in Poland (EURACOAL, 2020). In 2020, over 40 percent of the country’s total energy supply (TES) and 70 percent of its electricity generation come from coal and lignite (IEA, 2022), the highest rate in Europe. Coal in Poland also continues to employ about 88,000 people directly in the mines, down from about 444,000 in 1989. Europe’s commitment to stop its fossil fuel imports from Russia following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is slowing down Poland’s coal phase-out to ensure energy security in Europe,2 but Poland remains committed to a complete coal mine closure by 2049.
  • Publication
    Towards a Just Coal Transition Labor Market Challenges and People’s Perspectives from Wielkopolska
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-10-18) Ferré, Céline; Christiaensen, Luc; Gajderowicz, Tomasz Janusz; Honorati, Maddalena; Wrona, Sylwia Michalina
    Part of a three-region set of papers analyzing coal-related labor market challenges in Poland, this paper focuses on Wielkopolska, which is most advanced in the transition out of coal. Finding viable job transitions is of enormous importance. The findings call for a more territorial-oriented approach to brokering the coal transition, rather than a sectoral one. First, even though limited from a regional perspective (4,000 workers), affected jobs are highly concentrated in a few already lagging and depopulating municipalities. Second, while coal-related workers are similarly skilled as other workers in Wielkopolska, non-coal related workers in the at-risk municipalities are substantially less skilled, exposing them to potential displacement effects. Finally, while ready to work and to be re-skilled, discrete choice experiments about their job attribute preferences show that all workers are averse both to commuting and relocating for work, even more so than in Silesia and Lower Silesia. Complementary social protection and employment support will be needed, and the paper suggests some policy options based on international experience. The paper concludes by illustrating how a big-data driven job-matching tool, calibrated on the Polish labor market, could be used to assist caseworkers in identifying “viable-job-transition-pathways” for affected workers as well as to help policymakers identify reskilling needs and attract investments.
  • Publication
    Towards a Just Coal Transition
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022) Ferré, Céline; Christiaensen, Luc; Gajderowicz, Tomasz; Wrona, Sylwia
    Part of a three-region set of papers analyzing coal-related labor market challenges in Poland, this paper focuses on Lower Silesia. The findings call for a more territorial-oriented approach to brokering the coal transition, rather than a sectoral one. First, while the number of people directly and indirectly affected by coal mine closures in Lower Silesia (~5,500) is relatively small compared to the total regional labor force (<1%), affected workers are heavily concentrated geographically. Second, workers in heavily affected municipalities have lower foundational (but better technical) skills than their regional and national counterparts, and already operate in lagging local economies. Third, while eager to work, discrete choice experiments about their job attribute preferences show that they are averse to both, commuting and relocating for work, even though less so than in Silesia and Wielkopolska, the two other regions. Together this suggests that there are important welfare and political economic benefits to adequate job creation locally. The paper further advances a data-driven viable-job-matching tool specifically tailored to the Polish labor market and illustrates how it could be used to assess the potential of local labor markets and future investments to absorb the coal-affected workers accounting for their skills profile, re/upskilling needs and job attribute preferences.
  • Publication
    Towards a Just Coal Transition Labor Market Challenges and People’s Perspectives from Silesia
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022) Ferré, Céline; Christiaensen, Luc; Gajderowicz, Tomasz; Ruppert Bulmer, Elizabeth; Wrona, Sylwia
    Part of a three-region set of papers analyzing coal-related labor market challenges in Poland, this paper focuses on Silesia. The findings call for a more territorial-oriented approach to brokering the coal transition, rather than a sectoral one. First, the number of jobs directly linked to coal-mining in Silesia is substantial, with 72,000 employees in the mining conglomerates, and an additional 17,000 providing goods and services to the mines. Second, coal-related employment is heavily concentrated geographically: as much as 40 percent of the population of Bieruńsko-Iedziński is employed directly and indirectly in the mining sector, and 80 percent of the mining conglomerates' contract value goes to subcontractors within a 20km radius of the mines. Third, the coal sector is highly integrated among a few large firms: 28 percent of the indirect workforce is employed by 10 subcontractors. Fourth, workers in the mining conglomerates have lower foundational (but better technical) skills than their regional and national counterparts, especially those with lower education. Finally, while eager to work, discrete choice experiments about their job attribute preferences show that they are averse to both, commuting and relocating for work, even though less so than in Wielkopolska, yet more so that in Lower Silesia, the two other regions. Together this suggests that there are important welfare and political economic benefits to adequate job creation locally. The paper further advances a data-driven viable-job-matching tool specifically tailored to the Polish labor market and illustrates how it could be used to assess the potential of local labor markets and future investments to absorb the coal-affected workers accounting for their skills profile, re/upskilling needs, and job attribute preferences.
  • Publication
    Tracking Advances in Access to Electricity Using Satellite-Based Data and Machine Learning to Complement Surveys
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04-15) Dhorne, Milien; Nicolas, Claire; Arderne, Christopher; Besnard, Juliette
    Access to electricity is widely considered a major determinant of socioeconomic development. But despite long-standing efforts to expand access, 789 million people remained without electricity in 2018. Accurate and reliable data to keep track of electrification efforts must be the first step toward achieving universal access. Monitoring access with the finest granularity and taking into account local socioeconomic characteristics enable a realistic depiction of electrification progress. Such data can be used to plan efficient and robust energy access policies and programs, to raise public awareness of the urgency of action, to sustain the pace of electrification, and ultimately to connect the hardest-to-reach populations. In addition to identifying where efforts should be targeted, high-resolution data are needed to show which electricity supply options are most relevant. Remote sensing techniques and geographic information systems have revolutionized data collection by providing a range of location-specific information that was not previously accessible. The use of standardized geospatial tools and methods has made it possible to offer countries technical assistance and operational support for the development of national electrification strategies, least-cost electrification plans, and country-based investment prospectuses that combine grid, mini-grid, and off-grid technologies.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    The Container Port Performance Index 2023
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-07-18) World Bank
    The Container Port Performance Index (CPPI) measures the time container ships spend in port, making it an important point of reference for stakeholders in the global economy. These stakeholders include port authorities and operators, national governments, supranational organizations, development agencies, and other public and private players in trade and logistics. The index highlights where vessel time in container ports could be improved. Streamlining these processes would benefit all parties involved, including shipping lines, national governments, and consumers. This fourth edition of the CPPI relies on data from 405 container ports with at least 24 container ship port calls in the calendar year 2023. As in earlier editions of the CPPI, the ranking employs two different methodological approaches: an administrative (technical) approach and a statistical approach (using matrix factorization). Combining these two approaches ensures that the overall ranking of container ports reflects actual port performance as closely as possible while also being statistically robust. The CPPI methodology assesses the sequential steps of a container ship port call. ‘Total port hours’ refers to the total time elapsed from the moment a ship arrives at the port until the vessel leaves the berth after completing its cargo operations. The CPPI uses time as an indicator because time is very important to shipping lines, ports, and the entire logistics chain. However, time, as captured by the CPPI, is not the only way to measure port efficiency, so it does not tell the entire story of a port’s performance. Factors that can influence the time vessels spend in ports can be location-specific and under the port’s control (endogenous) or external and beyond the control of the port (exogenous). The CPPI measures time spent in container ports, strictly based on quantitative data only, which do not reveal the underlying factors or root causes of extended port times. A detailed port-specific diagnostic would be required to assess the contribution of underlying factors to the time a vessel spends in port. A very low ranking or a significant change in ranking may warrant special attention, for which the World Bank generally recommends a detailed diagnostic.
  • Publication
    Global Economic Prospects, January 2025
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16) World Bank
    Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.
  • Publication
    Interoperability Between Central Bank Digital Currency Systems and Fast Payment Systems
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-07-02) World Bank
    Central banks around the world are actively researching and investigating the benefits, challenges, and design options of wholesale and retail central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Since CBDCs are one of the most critical components of a national payment system (NPS), it is important that their interoperability with other payment systems is one of the key considerations in the design process. The ITS Technology and Innovation (ITSI) team, in collaboration with the World Banks’s Finance Competitiveness and Innovation (FCI) Global Practice, has conducted technology design experiments on two specific scenarios regarding CBDC system interoperability with fast payment systems (FPS). In the first scenario, the experiment investigated the option of settling FPS obligations in a wholesale CBDC system, including the option to reserve funds to guarantee the settlement of FPS net obligations. In the second scenario, the team investigated the interoperability between users within the FPS and retail CBDC users, including the transfer of funds among both types of users, using common services such as address resolution services. This experiment illustrated how CBDC systems can interoperate with retail payment systems through an interlinking bridge that was used to route messages and application programming interface (API) calls among different systems. The programmability features of distributed ledge technology (DLT) were used to link the settlement in CBDC to the transfer of funds in the FPS. The technical applicability for this type of interoperability was demonstrated through the experiments, with the caveat that these experiments do not take into account complexities that may be involved with live systems.
  • Publication
    Digital Progress and Trends Report 2023
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-05) World Bank
    Digitalization is the transformational opportunity of our time. The digital sector has become a powerhouse of innovation, economic growth, and job creation. Value added in the IT services sector grew at 8 percent annually during 2000–22, nearly twice as fast as the global economy. Employment growth in IT services reached 7 percent annually, six times higher than total employment growth. The diffusion and adoption of digital technologies are just as critical as their invention. Digital uptake has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic, with 1.5 billion new internet users added from 2018 to 2022. The share of firms investing in digital solutions around the world has more than doubled from 2020 to 2022. Low-income countries, vulnerable populations, and small firms, however, have been falling behind, while transformative digital innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) have been accelerating in higher-income countries. Although more than 90 percent of the population in high-income countries was online in 2022, only one in four people in low-income countries used the internet, and the speed of their connection was typically only a small fraction of that in wealthier countries. As businesses in technologically advanced countries integrate generative AI into their products and services, less than half of the businesses in many low- and middle-income countries have an internet connection. The growing digital divide is exacerbating the poverty and productivity gaps between richer and poorer economies. The Digital Progress and Trends Report series will track global digitalization progress and highlight policy trends, debates, and implications for low- and middle-income countries. The series adds to the global efforts to study the progress and trends of digitalization in two main ways: · By compiling, curating, and analyzing data from diverse sources to present a comprehensive picture of digitalization in low- and middle-income countries, including in-depth analyses on understudied topics. · By developing insights on policy opportunities, challenges, and debates and reflecting the perspectives of various stakeholders and the World Bank’s operational experiences. This report, the first in the series, aims to inform evidence-based policy making and motivate action among internal and external audiences and stakeholders. The report will bring global attention to high-performing countries that have valuable experience to share as well as to areas where efforts will need to be redoubled.
  • Publication
    World Development Report 2014
    (Washington, DC, 2013-10-06) World Bank
    The past 25 years have witnessed unprecedented changes around the world—many of them for the better. Across the continents, many countries have embarked on a path of international integration, economic reform, technological modernization, and democratic participation. As a result, economies that had been stagnant for decades are growing, people whose families had suffered deprivation for generations are escaping poverty, and hundreds of millions are enjoying the benefits of improved living standards and scientific and cultural sharing across nations. As the world changes, a host of opportunities arise constantly. With them, however, appear old and new risks, from the possibility of job loss and disease to the potential for social unrest and environmental damage. If ignored, these risks can turn into crises that reverse hard-won gains and endanger the social and economic reforms that produced these gains. The World Development Report 2014 (WDR 2014), Risk and Opportunity: Managing Risk for Development, contends that the solution is not to reject change in order to avoid risk but to prepare for the opportunities and risks that change entails. Managing risks responsibly and effectively has the potential to bring about security and a means of progress for people in developing countries and beyond. Although individuals’ own efforts, initiative, and responsibility are essential for managing risk, their success will be limited without a supportive social environment—especially when risks are large or systemic in nature. The WDR 2014 argues that people can successfully confront risks that are beyond their means by sharing their risk management with others. This can be done through naturally occurring social and economic systems that enable people to overcome the obstacles that individuals and groups face, including lack of resources and information, cognitive and behavioral failures, missing markets and public goods, and social externalities and exclusion. These systems—from the household and the community to the state and the international community—have the potential to support people’s risk management in different yet complementary ways. The Report focuses on some of the most pressing questions policy makers are asking. What role should the state take in helping people manage risks? When should this role consist of direct interventions, and when should it consist of providing an enabling environment? How can governments improve their own risk management, and what happens when they fail or lack capacity, as in many fragile and conflict-affected states? Through what mechanisms can risk management be mainstreamed into the development agenda? And how can collective action failures to manage systemic risks be addressed, especially those with irreversible consequences? The WDR 2014 provides policy makers with insights and recommendations to address these difficult questions. It should serve to guide the dialogue, operations, and contributions from key development actors—from civil society and national governments to the donor community and international development organizations.