Name: Labor-Market Tightness Index
Brand: AlpineDataWorks.AI
SKU: ADW-045
Availability: InStock

Use cases

What it unlocks

⌁

For an agent

A compensation-benchmarking agent reads ADW-045 monthly; when the labor tightness score rises above 60 (it peaked at 87.8 and has ranged from 0 to 87.8 across 123 observations, currently at 43.2 in the 35th percentile on a falling trend), it triggers a salary-band review workflow for hard-to-fill roles, cross-checks the openings_to_unemployed_ratio against the prior month to confirm direction, and suppresses alerts when confidence is below 0.8 to avoid noise from JOLTS revision months — methodology_version ensures the 36-month z-score window is consistently applied.

📈

For the business

A CHRO at a mid-market manufacturing company uses ADW-045's tightness_label and ratio_z to time its annual merit-increase cycle: when the score was above 70 (as it was for extended periods in 2021-2022), the team pre-budgeted 5-7% raises to stay competitive; as the score has fallen to the 35th percentile today, the same IOM signal is informing a return to 3% bands — replacing a quarterly JOLTS manual download that HR previously ran through an Excel model.

Forward outlook

Prediction

Horizon: —
Recommended use: Measure labor-market tightness via openings/unemployed ratio. High score = workers scarce relative to demand; expect wage pressure. Descriptive, monthly lag.

Methodology

How it's built

JOLTS openings ÷ unemployed ratio; z-score vs 36mo trailing window × 15 → 0-100 (50=neutral, >50=tight)

FRED (JTSJOL, UNEMPLOY)

Version ADW-045-live-1.0 · validated to beat a naive baseline · benchmark: none

Live response

The object an agent receives

One call returns the answer with its reasoning attached — the live Intelligence Object for ADW-045.

GET /v1/intelligence/adw-045

{
  "product_id": "ADW-045",
  "entity": "US labor market",
  "score": 43.2,
  "trend": "stable",
  "confidence": 0.86,
  "top_drivers": [
    {
      "factor": "openings_to_unemployed_ratio",
      "contribution": 1.043
    },
    {
      "factor": "ratio_z_score",
      "contribution": -0.451
    },
    {
      "factor": "job_openings_k",
      "contribution": 7618
    }
  ],
  "recommended_use": "Measure labor-market tightness via openings/unemployed ratio. High score = workers scarce relative to demand; expect wage pressure. Descriptive, monthly lag.",
  "methodology_version": "ADW-045-live-1.0",
  "freshness": "2026-06-27T06:00:13.697Z",
  "coverage": "US national (FRED JTSJOL + UNEMPLOY)",
  "source_lineage": [
    "FRED JTSJOL (Job Openings)",
    "FRED UNEMPLOY (Unemployed)"
  ],
  "allowed_use": "informational",
  "labor_tightness_score": 43.2,
  "tightness_label": "tight",
  "openings_to_unemployed_ratio": 1.043,
  "job_openings_k": 7618,
  "unemployed_k": 7307,
  "ratio_z": -0.451,
  "validation_status": "descriptive"
}

IOM schema