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

• Main Authors: Pedraza Pablo de, Visintin Stefano, Tijdens Kea, Kismihók Gábor
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sciendo 2019-09-01
• Series: IZA Journal of Labor Economics
• Subjects: web crawling; statistical inference; time series; vacancies; labor demand; data collection; j23; j63; c22; c80
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.2478/izajole-2019-0004

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.