Analysis by App Radar reveals downloads link with job vacancy data potentially providing new way to assess and predict economic conditions
London, UK; Research by app analytics and marketing company App Radar has revealed a link between the number of people downloading the UK’s top job seekers app and the number of job vacancies announced the following month in the UK.
The research was conducted by App Radar to showcase how app download trends could be used as economic indicators by providing useful insights into people’s behaviour in near real time.
App Radar analysed month on month download data on Google Play store for six of the UK’s largest apps for job seekers from January 2020 – July 2021. The apps analysed were – Hays Hub, JobSwipe, Michael Page UK, Reed, Totaljobs and UK Jobs.
The data shows three stages of job seeking behaviour throughout the pandemic: as job vacancies plummet to 568k* in March 2020 from 701k February, app downloads fell, but at a slower rate from 89k to 65k. Throughout the remainder of 2020 and early 2021 job vacancies remained flat at around 500k and app downloads at around 45k per month. From March 2021 job vacancies began to climb sharply from 570k to 862k as app downloads fell in step from 43k to 32k.
Download data for July – 32,000 – suggests that when the jobs vacancy data is announced it will show job vacancies remaining high at around 800-900k.
App Radar believes that by analysing app downloads in different categories and combining them with other data sets, policy makers and businesses can get new insights into how consumers behave.The advantage of download data is that it can be monitored in near real time and does not have to rely on expensive surveys that may only deliver data on a snapshot of time.
Silvio Peruci, COO at App Radar, said: “The inverse link between job app downloads and job vacancies makes total sense. If there are more jobs available, more people are employed and it’s easier to get a job so the need to download a job seekers app falls.
“The value of looking at app download data to predict consumer behaviour in the real economy is that it is instantaneous – you don’t have to wait for quarterly survey data or monthly figures collected from scores of sources. It can also be used to monitor and predict all kinds of trends, for example, hotel booking or airline apps indicating more people are planning to go on holiday, travel apps showing more people are planning to commute back into the office or cybersecurity apps that could indicate a surge in phishing or fraud.
“Combining this type of digital behaviour data with other sources could open up a world of possibilities for both businesses and governments to predict and respond to consumer behaviour.”