2 years ago
August 5, 2019
Slator Job Index Climbs During Record-Breaking August 2019
The Slator Language Industry Job Index (LIJI) was developed for the purpose of tracking how employment and hiring activity trends in the global language industry.
In August 2019, the Slator LIJI rose to 104.33 up from 102.81 in July 2019. The baseline was taken to be July 2018 (100), the starting point from which to measure expansion or contraction of employment and hiring activity across the industry.
The index has fluctuated over the past six months, with a slow start to the year in January 2019 and February 2019. It then grew three consecutive months in March 2019, April 2019, May 2019, and contracted slightly in June 2019, before expanding in July 2019.
The upward trend in August was reflected in most of the indicators used for the LIJI, including some of the job aggregation sites monitored by Slator and in the number of profiles returned using a keyword search for the Translation and Localization category on LinkedIn.
There was a decrease in job postings from Slator LSPI companies and on a number of the job aggregation sites monitored by Slator, which mitigated the overall increase.
Observational data relating to activity across the language industry in July 2019 show good indicators of a buoyant industry, with M&A and funding activity continuing strongly.
In M&A news, Acolad Group acquired Dutch-based LSP Livewords and DACH-focused Wieners+Wieners bought local rival BVIW in southern Germany. News of language industry funding outpaced M&A in July, with iFlytek, Halosis, and Lingua Custodia all securing funding. And Korea’s Flitto IPO’d on electronic trading platform Kosdaq, raising USD 23m from investors.
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In recent hiring, one language industry stalwart embarked on a new venture, as Trados creator Jochen Hummel joined the Summa Linguae board. And there were senior hires at Tilde, Andovar, XTM, and Mastervoice.
A number of news items covered by Slator highlighted likely drivers of localization demand. For example, India’s Supreme Court recently made the decision to translate judgments into six of the country’s 22 official languages. And the European Union tested four remote interpreting platforms and concluded that they may be able to satisfy a “hitherto hidden demand.”
The Slator LIJI relies on LinkedIn for a substantial part of the underlying data. The site has some 500 million users, many of whom share data about their skills, experience, location, company, and job title on their personal LinkedIn pages. There are over 600,000 profiles under the Translation and Localization category and a search for the keyword Localization also yields over 600,000 profiles.
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In addition to using data from LinkedIn, the Slator LIJI also culls data from a range of sources, including global job aggregation sites and additional direct company data collected from Slator LSPI companies.
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