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It has been a big year in politics once again with many important developments taking place internationally including prominent elections, trade negotiations, and of course Brexit! The Skillta team thought it would be a good time to review the demand for Political Science skills around the world over the course of 2018.
First up we can see in the stacked area chart below that the demand for Political Science skills was robust over the course of 2018, with the expected drops at the beginning and end of the year during the holiday period. What really stood out was the extremely high proportion of jobs that were on offer in the United States, which is not always the case as we have highlighted in analysis on technical skills such as Blockchain.
We can also observe in the chart below that there was significant growth in aggregate demand for Political Science skills in 2018 when compared to 2017, and again the largest contributor to this growth was from the United States. Around the world there was an overall increase of more than 250,000 new jobs requiring at least one Political Science skill over the course of 2018: quite a significant number!
Interestingly when we analyse the number of Political Science skills as a proportion of all skills analysed, there was not a noticeable change between 2017 and 2018. This indicates that there was strong overall jobs growth in the United States during this time as widely reported.
Now if we look at the volume and % change together by country we can see that the United States had by far the greatest volume of jobs in 2018, as well as the greatest increase in demand at 56%! Canada (53%) and Hong Kong (51%) had the second and third greatest increases in demand. Israel (-7%), Philippines (-6%), Nigeria (-5%) and interestingly the United Kingdom (-1%) were the only countries to see a contraction in demand for Political Science skills.
Next up we will dive deeper and look at the individual Political Science skills that were most in demand. The block chart below shows the individual Political Science skills that had the most jobs across all countries during 2018. Each block includes the skill name and the total number of jobs below it: as can be seen Policy Analysis, Political Culture, Government, Political Administration, and Public Policy were the top five skills in terms of volume.
Now if we look at the demand in the larger markets for individual Political Science skills we can identify differences in hiring trends. Below we have provided a detailed breakdown for the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, Nigeria, Singapore and South Africa.
United States
United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
India
Nigeria
Singapore
South Africa
Policy Analysis was the skill that was required by the greatest number of jobs in all countries except the United Kingdom. Political Economy, Foreign Policy, Government, Policy Studies, Political Economy and Public Administration also saw strong consistent demand.
In terms of % change between 2018 versus 2017 the following skills showed the highest level of growth on a per country basis, while also having a significant number of jobs on offer.
United States: Political Ideology (+88%) and Foreign Policy (+70%)
United Kingdom: Political Culture (+52%) and Civics (+28%)
Canada: Political History (71%) and Government (+59%)
Australia: Political Culture (+36%) and Policy Studies (+35%)
India: Political Campaign (+105%) and Political Methodology (+60%)
Nigeria: Policy Studies (+32%)
Singapore: International Organization (+32%) and Political Methodology (+43%)
South Africa: Political Corruption (+156%) and Political Campaign (+47%)
On the flip side, the following skills exhibited the greatest decline in demand when comparing 2018 with 2017.
United States: Comparative Politics(-11%)
United Kingdom: Peace and Conflict Studies (-49%) and International Organization (-32%)
Canada: Propaganda (-8%)
Australia: Peace and Conflict Studies (-52%), Elections (-28%) and Political Campaign (-28%)
India: Peace and Conflict Studies (-85%), Voting System (-30%) and Propaganda (-23%)
Nigeria: Political Campaign (-43%) and Political History (-38%)
Singapore: Civics (-21%) and Voting System (-10%)
South Africa: International Organization (-41%) and Geopolitics (-28%)
There are a wide variety of interesting careers that require the skills covered in this article. If you are a Political Science student, academic or professional we encourage you to create a free Skillta Basic account which makes it easy to monitor demand for all the skills that matter most to you and to view the relevant job openings that match these skills.
If there are any skills you want us to start monitoring please submit them to us. To learn more about the Skillta platform, including the Skillta Hierarchy and account types, you can find further information here.
When combining all the detailed skills that are monitored plus location and time we have millions of different data points. If you want to examine anything related to employment skill demand simply create a Skillta Basic, Pro or Premium account and take advantage of our easy to use self-service analytics platform.
