My Colorado Journey

Career data methodology

How we select and present Colorado career pathways

My Colorado Journey combines an approved pathway inventory with official labor-market benchmarks and a separate, timely view of employer demand. Each source has a defined job; no single proprietary score decides which careers Coloradans see.

Pathway content: September 2025Workbook metrics: December 2025BLS wages: 2025

Current generated snapshot

What the public catalog contains

646 of 816 imported occupation rows (79%) are canonical, classified, and code-backed for public search.

careers in the public catalog
646
Colorado industry areas
16
pathway families
76
careers carrying the Strong demand flag
194

Clear source roles

Official statistics and market signals answer different questions

We keep these layers separate in labels, sorting, and interpretation. A job-posting count is not an employment estimate, and it does not create or replace Colorado's Top Job designation.

BLS and Colorado LMI

Official benchmarks

What this layer does

  • BLS OEWS 2025 supplies the statewide median wage shown for a career when a six-digit SOC match exists.
  • The Colorado Talent Pipeline Report, grounded in Colorado labor-market information, defines the Top Job concept carried into the source workbook and shown publicly as Strong demand.
  • Official BLS/CDLE releases are the intended source of record for stable wage, employment, openings, and projection measures.

Boundary

The current repository has a BLS OEWS wage snapshot, but it does not yet ingest a direct CDLE occupational-projections feed. Workbook growth and openings remain source-period measures until they are validated or replaced by that official feed.

BLS OEWS Colorado LMI

Lightcast

Timely market signal

What this layer does

  • Shows unique job-posting demand by SOC/O*NET code and geography for Apr 2025 - Mar 2026.
  • Supports the default career-list sort and occupation-level employer and requested-skill context when coverage exists.
  • Adds county-to-workforce-region occupation-table context for selected regional views.

Boundary

Postings are observations of online recruiting activity, not official employment, openings, or projection estimates. They can reflect duplicates, coverage differences, staffing firms, and employer posting practices. Lightcast does not determine the Strong demand flag.

Pathway and occupation sources

Structure and context

What this layer does

  • September 2025 qualitative and December 2025 quantitative workbooks provide the current MCJ inventory, pathway placement, narratives, metrics, and source flags.
  • O*NET 30.3 supplies standardized occupation descriptions, tasks, skills, abilities, knowledge, and Job Zones.
  • IndigoPathway SOC grouping supplies pathway names and selected work-style context.

Boundary

These sources organize and explain careers. They do not, by themselves, prove a current vacancy, guarantee eligibility for a job or program, or establish that one pathway is the right choice for every person.

Selection and publishing flow

From source row to public career

  1. Step 1

    Step 1

    Start with the approved pathway inventory

    Colorado pathway workbooks define the industries, pathway families, occupations, narrative guidance, and source flags that enter the pipeline.

  2. Step 2

    Step 2

    Match occupations to standard codes

    Uploaded occupation IDs are the primary join. Six-digit SOC and O*NET-SOC codes provide the fallback for occupational descriptions, preparation, wages, and market signals.

  3. Step 3

    Step 3

    Group near-duplicate roles

    Reviewed occupation groups keep one canonical career in search while preserving related specializations underneath it. Unclassified records and rows without a usable SOC/O*NET code stay in the warehouse but do not enter the main catalog.

  4. Step 4

    Step 4

    Validate before publishing

    The release check enforces row minimums, unique keys, usable numeric values, O*NET and source-flag coverage, forecast boundaries, route mappings, and removal of spreadsheet formula errors.

How the site presents “in demand”

Strong demandis the public-facing label for a career carrying the source workbook's Colorado Talent Pipeline Report-aligned Top Job flag. It is a designation, not a score we recalculate from Lightcast postings.

Read the Colorado Talent Pipeline Report

Career Explorer

Results default to the current Lightcast job-posting-demand sort. People can instead sort by BLS median pay or source-workbook growth and filter by industry, education, pathway, and reviewed signals. Sorting changes presentation; it does not change the Strong demand designation.

Industry pathway maps

Roles are placed into Entry, Mid, and Advanced bands from the source skill level. Related child occupations remain under a parent role. The map is an exploration aid, not a required or guaranteed sequence of promotions.

Missing data

The interface shows a neutral unavailable state rather than substituting one source for another. In the current public catalog, 586 careers have a BLS wage match and 583 have a Lightcast posting-demand match.

What to keep in mind

Labor markets change, source coverage is uneven, and taxonomy matches involve judgment. This site is a planning tool—not a promise of employment, pay, admission, or funding.

  • 135 imported rows lack a base SOC code and remain qualitative-only in the current warehouse; they are not shown in code-backed public search.
  • 145 imported rows have no workbook regional metric, and 37 have no IndigoPathway match.
  • Workbook cells marked “Insf. Data” or containing formula errors are excluded. Suppressed counts shown as “<10” are stored as 9 for chart compatibility, so they should not be interpreted as exact counts.
  • Employer and requested-skill details come from samples of recent postings. Their counts are descriptive and are only displayed when minimum sample rules are met.

Explore with context

See the methodology in practice

Compare careers while keeping official pay, source designations, and job-posting demand in their proper lanes.

Explore careers
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