Survey vs Scraped Data: Comparing Time Series Properties of Web and Survey Vacancy Data

comparing time series properties of web and survey vacancy data

This paper studies the relationship between a vacancy population obtained from web crawling and vacancies in the economy inferred by a National Statistics Office (NSO) using a traditional method. We compare the time series properties of samples obtained between 2007 and 2014 by Statistics Netherlands and by a web scraping company. We find that the web and NSO vacancy data present similar time series properties, suggesting that both time series are generated by the same underlying phenomenon: the real number of new vacancies in the economy. We conclude that, in our case study, web-sourced data are able to capture aggregate economic activity in the labor market.

DE PEDRAZA GARCIA Pablo;  VISINTIN Stefano;  KEA Tijdens;  KISMIHOK Gabor; 

2019-11-28

Springer Open

JRC113401

2193-8997 (online),   

https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/izajole/8/1/article-20190004.xml,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC113401,   

https://doi.org/10.2478/izajole-2019-0004 (online),