Patent ID: 7480659
Filing Date: 2009-01-20
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. An information system for assessing demand for occupations and skills and the need for various training and instructional programs comprising: a. a relational database resident in a computer-readable medium containing economic development information, workforce development information and education key information, such as historical and forecasted economic data regarding economic variables including jobs, unemployment, wages, productivity, and any changes therein; b. a graphical user interface providing distributed computer network access to said database and a plurality of software implemented user tools for assembling and processing the data in ways meaningful to the user, including correlation of the information in said database by one or more of the following parameters: region, industry, employer characteristic, occupation; worker attribute; demographics, said graphical user interface and said tools being operable to allow a user to selectively retrieve analysis of one or more of the following: wherein said graphical user interface and said tools are operable to allow a user to selectively retrieve analysis of the workers available in a region for a user-selected industry on a user readable display indicating: a plurality of occupations; a number indicating the number of required employees for each of said occupations; a number indicating the number of employed persons in said region corresponding to each of said occupations; and a number indicating the number of unemployed persons in said region corresponding to each of said occupations, wherein one of said software implemented tools assigns an occupation attribute value between 0 and 1 for each of a plurality of pre-defined occupation attributes to each of said occupations; wherein said software implemented tool assigns an occupation vector in multi-dimensional space to each of said occupations based on said occupation attribute values corresponding to each of said occupations; wherein said software implemented tool computes the angular cosine distance between every pair of said occupation vectors utilizing a cosine distance formula; and wherein said software implemented tool classifies a first occupation as an extension occupation in relation to a second occupation if said first occupation is similar to said second occupation when said angular cosine distance between the occupation vector corresponding to said first occupation and the occupation vector corresponding to said second occupation is less than a pre-determined threshold; and c. a computer for processing said data.