What our data covers, where it comes from, how the platform works, and what it takes to get started, answered plainly, with the methodology behind every number.
Chmura Economics & Analytics is a labor market analytics and economic consulting company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, founded in 2000. Chmura combines trusted labor market data, the JobsEQ platform, and a team of Ph.D. economists to help organizations make faster, more defensible workforce, economic, and education decisions.
Chmura is not just a software company or a consulting firm. Organizations can run their own analysis in JobsEQ, commission custom work from Chmura's economists, or do both. That combination is the core of how Chmura works with clients.
Chmura's team includes two economists recognized among the Blue Chip Economic Indicators top 50 U.S. forecasters.
JobsEQ is Chmura's labor market analytics platform. It brings government economic data, real-time job postings, wage data, demographics, and education data together in one place so you can answer workforce questions in seconds instead of assembling data from multiple sources manually.
JobsEQ is used by economic development organizations, workforce boards, colleges and CTE programs, HR and talent acquisition teams, staffing firms, and site selection consultants. You do not need to be an economist or analyst to use it.
Yes. JobsEQ is the software platform built and maintained by Chmura Economics & Analytics. Chmura is the company; JobsEQ is its product. Chmura also offers economic consulting services and direct data delivery through APIs, embeddable widgets, and Snowflake.
You may see the two names used interchangeably in the market. If you have a JobsEQ subscription, you are a Chmura client, and the same team of economists supports both the platform and consulting engagements.
JobsEQ is used across six main groups: economic development organizations, workforce boards and workforce agencies, higher education and CTE programs, corporate HR and talent acquisition teams, staffing firms, and site selection consultants. Public sector agencies, hospitals and health systems, and expert-witness consultants also use it.
The common thread is a need to answer labor market questions quickly, with data that holds up in front of a board, a funder, an accreditor, or a prospective employer.
No. JobsEQ is built for people who need answers, not just for analysts. Pre-built reports, curated templates, and ready-to-use visuals cover the most common questions, and every subscription includes onboarding and 1:1 support from Chmura's economists.
Most users solve the majority of their work through one or two repeatable workflows. Power users and research staff who want to build custom scenarios and run more advanced modeling can add a more advanced configuration.
An optional in-platform AI assistant module is also available to eligible subscriptions, to help run analytics, interpret results, and navigate the platform. Live chat with a human expert is available throughout your subscription.
The JobsEQ family includes the core analytics platform (JobsEQ and JobsEQ Pro), an education-focused configuration, Real-Time Intelligence (RTI) for live job postings, Talent Watch for employer tracking, Salary Sonar for compensation benchmarking, Resume Forensics for resume and skills analysis, and Career Concourse for student career exploration.
Not every product applies to every organization. Chmura will scope the right combination during a demo.
Canvas is a custom report-building product currently in limited beta. Chmura is still finalizing its capabilities and availability, so specifics are not yet published.
If you would like to be kept informed as Canvas becomes generally available, get in touch with the Chmura team.
JobsEQ combines two kinds of data: structured data from trusted government sources including the BLS, Census Bureau, BEA, O*NET, NCES, and IPEDS; and proprietary real-time data from job postings aggregated across more than 45,000 job posting sites. Chmura's economists and data scientists review and validate all of it.
Blending the two matters. Government series are authoritative but published with a lag. Real-time postings show what employers are doing right now but are noisy on their own. Together they give you both the long-term trend and the current signal.
Chmura also applies proprietary forecasting and planning models on top of these inputs, and layers in resume data for outcome and skills analysis.
Real-time job postings data updates daily. Government-sourced series updates as soon as new data is released by the issuing agency, which varies by dataset, some monthly, some quarterly, some annually. JobsEQ is refreshed on that agency schedule rather than held for a fixed release cycle.
This is an important distinction when you are evaluating providers. "Real-time" should describe the job postings layer, not the government series underneath it, and no vendor can publish a BLS series faster than BLS does.
Raw job posting feeds contain substantial duplication, because the same opening is often posted to many boards at once. JobsEQ applies proprietary parsing, deduplication, and AI-powered classification to normalize job titles, employers, skills, and locations before the data reaches you.
The AI classification step is what makes postings searchable and comparable. It categorizes job titles, employers, and required skills consistently across sources so that a search for one occupation returns the full picture rather than whatever wording a given employer happened to use.
Chmura documents its methodology and makes it available to clients rather than treating it as a black box, because clients need to defend their numbers in front of boards, funders, and prospects.
Yes. JobsEQ provides data down to the ZIP code and block level, and you can define custom regions rather than being limited to preset geographies. That includes labor sheds, drive-time rings, multi-county regions, and any user-defined boundary.
Custom geography is one of the most common reasons organizations move to JobsEQ. Real labor markets rarely match county or MSA lines, and a prospect asking "can you staff this facility?" needs an answer for the actual commuting area, not the nearest statistical region.
A laborshed (also written labor shed) is the geographic area an employer actually draws workers from. The real-world commuting area around a site, which usually crosses county and metro boundaries. JobsEQ lets you define a laborshed by drive time or custom boundary and analyze labor supply, wages, skills, and demographics within it.
Laborshed analysis is central to site selection, business retention and expansion work, and any conversation with an employer about whether a location can support their hiring plan.
Yes. JobsEQ includes real-time job ads data from 17 countries, including Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa, India, and Ireland. International postings are queried through the Talent Watch and RTI analytics and support cross-border comparison, competitive analysis, and sourcing strategy.
International coverage is delivered through the job postings dataset. Depth of structured government data varies by country.
Yes, through three delivery options: a developer-friendly API for real-time postings and structured data, a native Snowflake data share that is queryable with standard SQL and requires no ETL pipelines, and embeddable widgets for public-facing dashboards, portals, and job boards.
Delivery method does not change redistribution rules. Scope and licensing are confirmed before any integration begins.
Yes, that is what it is built for. Chmura documents its methodology and shares it with clients, sources its structured data from recognized government agencies, and has its models reviewed by economists and data scientists. Clients routinely use JobsEQ output in Perkins V and WIOA reporting, grant applications, board packets, and RFP responses.
If a reviewer or stakeholder challenges a figure, you can show where it came from and how it was calculated. If you need an independent expert to stand behind an analysis, Chmura's consulting team can produce and defend custom work, including expert testimony.
Chmura uses AI in two ways: to classify and normalize job titles, employers, and skills across millions of job postings, and as an optional in-platform assistant module that helps users run analytics, interpret results, and navigate JobsEQ. The assistant module requires acceptance of Chmura's AI Assistant terms.
Two boundaries are worth stating plainly. The AI assistant supports macro labor market analysis only. It is not used to evaluate individual job candidates. And human live chat support with real economists and analysts is available throughout your subscription; AI does not replace it.
Chmura is a labor market analytics and economic consulting company that uses AI where it improves the data, not an AI company.
Most users are productive quickly because they start with one or two workflows rather than the whole platform. Every subscription includes onboarding and 1:1 support from Chmura's economists, plus curated report templates so you are not building analyses from a blank page.
JobsEQ is a deep platform, and the full feature set can look daunting in a demo. In practice, most organizations solve the large majority of their work through a small number of repeatable reports, then expand as new questions come up.
Every JobsEQ subscription includes onboarding, 1:1 support, and in-platform live chat. Support is provided by Chmura's economists and analysts rather than a general ticket queue, so questions about methodology and interpretation are answered by people who built the data.
Training is included rather than sold as a separate package, and can be repeated as staff change or new use cases come up.
Yes. JobsEQ exports clean, presentation-ready charts, maps, and tables in a few clicks, and supports large data downloads for teams that want to work in Excel or their own BI tools. Pre-built reports export as single documents ready to share with stakeholders.
Export quality is a frequent reason organizations switch platforms, so it is worth testing during a demo with a report you actually have to produce.
Yes. You can configure alerts for new job postings matching the occupations, employers, skills, or regions you care about, and share frequently run reports across your team so recurring metrics are always a click away.
Alerts are commonly used for business retention and expansion work, competitive hiring monitoring, and tracking employers new to a market.
License structure depends on your organization's size and needs. Chmura scopes seats and access during the quoting process rather than applying a fixed per-seat rule. Public-facing tools such as Career Concourse and embeddable widgets are licensed separately from internal platform seats.
Redistribution of JobsEQ data outside your organization is governed by your license terms. If you plan to share outputs publicly or with partners, flag it early so it can be scoped correctly.
EDOs use JobsEQ to answer prospect and stakeholder questions fast: how deep is the labor pool for a given occupation, what do those roles pay locally, how does the region compare to peer markets, which industries are growing, and which employers are hiring or expanding right now.
The most common triggers are an RFP or prospect inquiry with a short turnaround, a board or council presentation, a grant deadline, and business retention and expansion outreach. In each case, the underlying need is the same: a credible answer, quickly, that you can show your work on.
Yes. You can build the exact laborshed or drive-time region a prospect specifies, then pull labor availability, wage rates, skills, commuting patterns, demographics, and competitive hiring activity for that footprint, along with charts and tables ready to drop into the response.
Site selection consultants also use JobsEQ directly to compare candidate locations on labor supply, wages, and demographics.
Workforce boards use JobsEQ to identify in-demand occupations and skills, align training investments with actual employer demand, support WIOA planning and reporting requirements, and measure program outcomes with data that funders accept.
Because the same platform covers both real-time postings and long-term projections, you can show what employers are hiring for today and where demand is heading, which is usually what a funder wants to see in the same document.
Yes. JobsEQ includes a housing demand analytic that helps communities translate employment and workforce growth projections into expected housing need, so planning conversations can be grounded in labor market data rather than assumption.
JobsEQ includes a pre-built Perkins V report that compiles the labor market section of your Comprehensive Local Needs Assessment into a single exportable document. It covers an industry snapshot, an occupation snapshot identifying high-demand and high-wage roles, real-time job postings, skill and certification gaps, and awards data.
Because the underlying data is refreshed as new information becomes available, the report reflects current market conditions rather than a snapshot from the last cycle, which matters given CLNA updates are required on a recurring basis.
The report delivers the labor market evidence your CLNA needs. State templates and submission requirements vary, so confirm your state's specific format.
Yes. JobsEQ maps CIP codes to SOC codes, connecting each academic or CTE program to the occupations it feeds. You can then compare your program completions against regional openings, wages, and employer-requested skills to see where you should grow, adjust, or sunset offerings.
The program-to-occupation crosswalk is one of the features education clients cite most often, because it turns an abstract "are our programs relevant?" conversation into a specific, defensible comparison you can take to a dean, a board, or an accreditor.
Yes. Resume Forensics uses structured resume data to show where graduates go, what roles they land, and how programs perform in the market. It is a more reliable alternative to graduate surveys, which typically suffer from low and non-random response rates.
Alumni outcome data supports accreditation, program review, ROI conversations with prospective students, and Workforce Pell eligibility discussions.
Yes. Career Concourse is a fully branded career exploration tool powered by JobsEQ data. Students can see how your programs connect to occupations and career paths, browse live job postings in their region, take skill and interest assessments, and build resumes — all in one place.
Career Concourse is licensed alongside an education JobsEQ subscription rather than included in a platform seat, and is used by career services teams, advising staff, workforce programs, and high school counselors.
Community and technical colleges, four-year colleges and universities, CTE programs and secondary districts, and state coordinating boards. Typical users sit in institutional research, provost and academic affairs offices, deans' and program chairs' offices, career services, and state CTE offices.
Corporate teams use JobsEQ to answer three recurring questions: where the talent we need actually exists and at what depth, what we need to pay to attract and retain it, and what competitors are doing in the market right now. It is external labor market intelligence, not an ATS or HRIS.
Common applications include location and expansion planning, pay band design, offer strategy, competitive hiring monitoring, and long-range workforce planning.
Salary Sonar provides regionally specific compensation benchmarks built from JobsEQ data, including real-time advertised salary ranges. You can compare wages for a role in a specific market, structure pay bands and offers, test your current ranges against the market, and review wage trends over time.
Geography is the point. National salary averages are of limited use when you are hiring into a specific metro, and traditional survey-based benchmarks are often a year or more behind the market.
Yes. Talent Watch tracks the hiring activity of specific employers — what roles they are posting, where they are expanding or contracting, what skills they are asking for, and what they are advertising as pay. Real-Time Intelligence provides the broader market view of live demand.
Staffing firms use the same capability to spot high-opportunity roles and regions and to time outreach to employers who are actively hiring. See staffing solutions
No. JobsEQ is a labor market analytics platform. It analyzes markets, not individual candidates. It will tell you where a talent pool exists, how deep it is, and what it costs, but it does not source, screen, or rank applicants, and it is not an applicant tracking system or a job board.
JobsEQ is used alongside recruiting systems rather than in place of them, informing where to recruit and what to offer before a requisition opens.
Chmura's economists provide industry and labor market analysis, economic and fiscal impact studies, economic development strategic planning, socioeconomic benchmarking and site selection, education alignment and alumni reports, public policy analysis, and custom advisory work including expert testimony.
Consulting is used when a decision is high-stakes, the analysis is non-standard, or a team simply does not have the internal bandwidth. Engagements are scoped individually.
Use JobsEQ for recurring analysis, internal reporting, and questions you need answered independently and repeatedly. Use consulting for complex, one-off, or high-stakes work such as impact studies, custom forecasting, or expert testimony. Many clients do both, and JobsEQ subscribers receive consulting at a discounted rate.
The hybrid approach is common: teams run day-to-day analysis themselves in JobsEQ and bring in Chmura's economists for the two or three projects a year that need an independent expert behind them.
Yes. Economic and fiscal impact studies are a core Chmura consulting service, covering the employment, output, and tax revenue effects of a project, facility, institution, or policy change. Studies are produced by Chmura's Ph.D. economists and are built to withstand public and stakeholder scrutiny.
These studies are frequently used to support funding requests, incentive negotiations, board and council decisions, and public communications.
JobsEQ is licensed by subscription, and pricing depends on which products you need, the size and type of your organization, the number of users, and your data delivery requirements. Chmura provides a quote after a scoping conversation rather than publishing fixed list pricing.
What is included in every subscription: onboarding, 1:1 support from Chmura's economists, and in-platform live chat.
JobsEQ subscribers also receive Chmura consulting services at a discounted rate.
Test five things with your own real use case: geographic granularity (can it build your actual region, not just a county), methodology transparency (can you see how a number was produced), export quality (can you get results out cleanly), support model (do you reach an expert or a ticket queue), and total cost including training and add-ons.
The most useful evaluation exercise is to take one report you are genuinely required to produce, like a CLNA labor market section, an RFP response, a board packet, and ask each vendor to produce it during the trial or demo. Feature lists compare poorly; a real deliverable compares well.
Chmura's own positioning is straightforward: depth, transparency, custom geography, and direct access to economists. Other providers in this category, including Lightcast and TalentNeuron, position differently. Evaluate against your own requirements rather than any vendor's framing, including ours.
Yes, and it is a common path. Onboarding is included; Chmura's team will help rebuild the recurring reports you rely on today, and most organizations start with the one or two workflows that matter most rather than migrating everything at once.
If you are mid-contract elsewhere, it is still worth scoping early. Renewal timing and reporting deadlines often determine the best switch window.
Chmura offers a personalized demo rather than a self-serve free trial. A demo is run against your region and your use case, so you see the platform answering your questions rather than a generic walkthrough.
Come with a specific question you actually need answered. A prospect inquiry, a program review, a pay band, a grant requirement. That is the fastest way to judge whether the platform fits.
Use the in-platform live chat for the fastest response. It connects you to Chmura's economists and analysts. You can also reach your customer success contact directly, or call the Richmond office at 804-554-5400.
Log in at jobseq.eqsuite.com. For questions about methodology or how to approach an analysis, live chat is usually faster than email — you are talking to the people who built the data.
Book a demo. Chmura's team will scope which products fit your organization, show the platform against your region and your questions, and provide a quote. If your need is a one-time study rather than ongoing analysis, ask about consulting instead.
Bring us the one you actually need answered — a prospect inquiry, a program review, a pay band, a grant requirement. We will show you how JobsEQ answers it for your region.