Demand for Bilingual Workers Increasing in Florida
Date: March 21, 2016
As employers strive to increase their competitiveness in the global economy, they are increasingly seeking candidates who have the language skills necessary to communicate with a diverse customer base, and with operations and competitors overseas. New analysis of Burning Glass data explores the growing demand for bilingual talent in Florida from some of the state’s biggest industries and employers, and highlights the need to attract and promote language diversity in Florida’s workforce among both foreign- and U.S.-born workers.
Every day, Burning Glass collects data from almost 40,000 sources, mining and coding data from each posting. To obtain data on bilingual and foreign language requirements in Florida, PNAE used key-word text searches (for example: “Bilingual,” and “Spanish”) to mine job postings by year, occupation (group), employer, and industry.
Key findings include:
- Between 2010 and 2014 in Florida, the number of online job postings for bilingual candidates more than doubled, from 7,565 in 2010 to 18,116 in 2014.
- In 2014, over one third (40%) of online job postings in Florida at Bank of America were for bilingual candidates, over a quarter of postings at H&R Block (25.4%), and over 10 percent at Citi (13.9%), UnitedHealth Group (15%), AT&T (15.2%), and Humana (19.3%).
- Demand for bilingual candidates in Florida more than doubled in the following industries between 2010 and 2014: General Medical and Surgical Hospitals; Business Support Services; Wireless Telecommunications Carriers; Insurance Carriers; Accounting, Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping, and Payroll Services; Automotive Parts, Accessories, and Tire Stores; Consumer Goods Rental; Traveler Accommodation; Restaurants and Other Eating Places.
- Nearly every metro area in Florida saw the number of online job postings for bilingual workers double between 2010 and 2014, and several saw those numbers triple, including the metro areas of Lakeland-Winter Haven, Cape Coral-Fort Meyers, Panama City-Lynn Haven-Panama City Beach, Sebastian-Vero Beach, Punta Gorda, and Palm Coast.
This data was accessed in January 2016.
