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The local presence and composition of skills is commonly thought to have enormous implications foreconomic development. Yet, skills and the relations between them are notoriously difficult to pinpointand measure. We develop a method that uses information available in Swedish job postings tomeasure the skill-relatedness of jobs and the skill-coherence of local economies. Our skill-relatednessmeasure can be assumed to be exogenous to local economic outcomes such as wages, productivity andlabour mobility. We corroborate some previous research findings and show that workers tend to switchbetween related jobs and that local economies are on average skill-coherent. However, less coherentlocal economies are associated with higher average wages and productivity. Local economies whereworkers switch between related jobs though enjoy higher average wages. In all, this points to thebenefit of local labour market clusters within more diverse regions. We conclude that job postingsprovide a wealth of information on the skill-foundations of local development. A job-level skill-relatedness matrix accompanies the paper.

This paper uses register data and open vacancy data to determine if green industries require different skills than other employers. This is done by focusing on how the entry of the battery producer Northvolt changed the labour demand when establishing in Skellefteå (Sweden). Using data on all vacancies in Sweden 2016–2023 we analyse the skill- and knowledge demand in Northvolt's job ads and compare that to the labour demand at the local, regional and national level. In terms of occupations, we find only minor tendencies towards a higher demand of higher-skilled jobs compared to incumbent local employers, but an increase of service work and a reinforcement of the local manual work specialization. Using language models, we combine the vacancies with a scheme of skills and knowledge from the ESCO-taxonomy. Interestingly, Northvolt deviates in both the skill- and knowledge requirements compared to similar jobs in the rest of the country. This especially concerns a greater emphasis on information, collaboration and communication skills in contrast to other employers who stress manufacturing experience. Despite these skill-specific differences, our experimental approach finds little evidence that the entry spurred a significant diversification and upgrading of the regional labour market.