The Slator Language Industry Job Index (LIJI) was developed for the purpose of tracking how employment and hiring activity is trending across the global language industry.
In its sixth month, January 2019, the Slator Language Job Index (LIJI) dipped to 101.33 from 104.02, down 2.69 points from the month of December 2018. The baseline is taken to be July 2018 (100) and is used as a starting point from which to measure expansion or contraction of employment and hiring activity across the industry.
The index has fluctuated over the past few months, increasing slightly from July to August 2018, falling marginally in September 2018, climbing by two points in October 2018, declining slightly in November 2018 to 100.85, and reaching a new high in December 2018.
The downward trend in January was reflected across many of the indicators used for the LIJI, including the number of profiles on LinkedIn returned using the keyword search. However, there was a slight increase in the number of profiles registered under the Translation and Localization category on LinkedIn as well as in the number of job postings listed on some of the job aggregation sites that Slator monitors, and among Slator LSPI companies, which mitigated the overall decrease for the month of January.
Observational data relating to activity across the language industry in December 2018 shows a buoyant market across the globe both in terms of M&A, company financial results, and hiring. On the M&A front, BTI Studios completed the acquisition of two dubbing studios in Rome, Ubiqus acquired boutique technical specialist Gedev, and TransPerfect bolted on mobile app and gaming localizer Applanga. Meanwhile, Benchmark Capital took a 13.6% stake in DeepL.
In the UK, RWS posted solid full-year 2018 results having integrated Moravia revenues, and TranslateMedia also filed its financial results, showing that revenues had declined by 5.6%. Across the pond, Lionbridge told Slator that 2018 had been “a very good year” for the company.
December 2018 was a busy month for hiring: the EU was seeking 225 translation contractors for six target languages, and a conference interpreter was elected to Switzerland’s top government post. To kick off 2019, Slator reported on senior hires at Iconic, Global Lingo, Livewords, Lionbridge, and Ubiqus USA.
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. The site has over 600,000 profiles under its Translation and Localization category and a search for the keyword Localization also yields over 600,000 profiles.
In addition to using data from LinkedIn, the Slator LIJI is based on 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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