Belfast Labour Market Partnership

How we developed the Belfast Labour Market Partnership

The Belfast Labour Market Partnership (LMP) is focused on improving Belfast’s employability outcomes and labour market conditions by working with a wide range of partners, being flexible to meet local needs and helping to connect employers with employees. We developed the partnership with funding from the Department for Communities (DfC) and Department for the Economy (DfE). 

Working with stakeholder groups

We’ve worked with a wide range of stakeholder groups to consider these four areas in depth:

• supply (people)
• demand (employment)
• provision (education, training and support programmes)
• policy

 This gave us the information we needed to:

• develop a Belfast LMP action plan tailored to the city’s labour market needs
• agree the city’s sector and industry specific needs
• review supply and demand levels to identify gaps and challenges; and
• commission the new support required.

Key areas of focus

We'll be focusing on two key pieces of work, a Labour Market Observatory and Gateway Service..

Labour Market Observatory

Belfast LMP is setting up a Labour Market Observatory as a new way of bringing together intelligence, data and information on key elements of the city’s labour market in one central resource. This resource will be freely available to jobseekers, students, intermediaries, policy makers, training and education providers, investors and employers and will help build better opportunities and pathways to employment by giving a microscopic view of Belfast’s labour market in the short, medium and long term.

The Observatory will provide intelligence and labour market trends on:

• demand (job opportunities and vacancies)
• supply (people looking for jobs or better jobs)
• provision (education, training and other support programmes) and
• policy (for example The Belfast Agenda, 10X vision for the NI economy)

Gateway Service

We want to help people make informed career choices by providing easy to access, independent and quality information, advice and guidance tailored to their individual needs and career aspirations.

Working closely with the Careers Service, work coaches, relevant health services and local VCSE organisations, our Gateway Service will give people specific support to:

• appropriate provision
• job-matching and brokerage
• funding mechanisms and interventions

More information on Belfast Labour Market Partnership

You can read a summary of our 2022-2023 action plan online or contact Belfast Labour Market Partnership: lmp@belfastcity.gov.uk.