Slator Language Industry Job Index Up Over 2 Points in September 2020

Hiring activity in the language industry continues to heat up post-Covid, as shown by the biggest jump in the Slator Language Industry Job Index (LIJI), thus far, in 2020. The LIJI was developed to track employment and hiring trends in the global language industry.

The September 2020 LIJI rose to 99.25 from the month prior — a record jump of 2.32 points even compared to the months before Covid — but is still below the baseline. The baseline, taken to be July 2018 (100), is the starting point from which expansion or contraction of employment and hiring activity across the industry is measured.

The jump is linked to an increase in job ads from August 2020 across all but one platform monitored by Slator, as well as a 10,000 increase in the number of people returned using a keyword search for Translation and Localization on LinkedIn.

The Slator LIJI had already started to rebound in August 2020, albeit ever so slightly, rising to 96.93 from 95.66 in July 2020.

Observational data related to hiring activity across the language industry in the month of August 2020 showed solid indicators of a buoyant industry — foremost of which was RWS’ acquisition of SDL in a 1.1-billion-dollar, all-share deal that will undoubtedly transform the language industry.

As Slator broke the news less than two hours after the deal’s announcement, the transaction valued SDL shares at a whopping 52% premium over the company’s most recent share price. The deal is expected to close in Q4 2020, subject to conditions.

Recent M&A and Funding news also included SYSTRAN taking on a new majority shareholder and translation and captioning provider Ai-Media poised to raise over AUD 60m in its Sydney IPO.

Senior hiring news continued through August 2020, as reported by Slator. Among other recent hires, Indian language service provider (LSP), Crystal Hues, named Radhakrishnan Mani COO; and German LSP lengoo appointed former Lionbridge exec Natalie Krüger as Regional Director for Switzerland.

The Slator LIJI relies on LinkedIn for part of its underlying data. The social media site has some 500 million users, many of whom share data about their skills, experience, location, company, and job titles on their personal LinkedIn pages. There are over 600,000 profiles under the Translation and Localization category and a search using the keyword Localization also yields more than 600,000 profiles.

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.