Combination to Create a Leading Labor Market Analytics Company
Burning Glass Technologies (“Burning Glass”) today announced it is merging with Emsi to create a leading labor market analytics firm. As part of the transaction, Burning Glass’ largest investor, KKR, is making a follow-on investment in the combined company, and Strada Education Network, Emsi’s current owner, will be exiting its investment. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The combination of Burning Glass and Emsi will bring together two premier, complementary sources of labor market data to provide insight into the changing workforce for clients including corporations, government agencies, and higher education institutions.
Burning Glass has one of the world’s largest real-time, proprietary databases of job openings and career histories, with data collected from more than 40,000 sources daily and in more than 30 countries. Emsi is a leader in combining government and real-time labor market data, customer support, and product development in labor analytics. The newly formed company will bring together the best of both organizations, empowering even more individuals and companies to navigate the large changes in the labor market, including technological disruption.
The combined company will be called Emsi Burning Glass and will be led by Burning Glass CEO Matt Sigelman, with Andrew Crapuchettes, former CEO of Emsi, serving as a strategic advisor to the Board of Directors. Emsi’s recently built headquarters in Moscow, ID, will continue to be a major hub for the business, along with Burning Glass’ headquarters in Boston, MA.
“Burning Glass and Emsi are two companies with a common mission: to unlock opportunity, mobility, and equity for everyone. We are deeply committed to the dignity and value of work, as well as to ensuring that employers, educators, governments, and workers are ready to meet the rapidly changing future,” said Matt Sigelman. “Our complementary capabilities in data analytics and product development will give us the scale and resources to deliver even greater value to our customers through new, enhanced products. We are looking forward to working together to continue to drive transformative change in the labor market.”
“For two decades I have been honored to lead Emsi and see our workforce grow from a small group into nearly 300 of the finest employees any CEO could ask for,” said Andrew Crapuchettes. “Our team has set the standard for customer service and data analytics in a continual effort to bless our customers. I know they will thrive in this new, combined company, and I look forward to seeing them reach even greater heights.”
“The world of work continues to undergo seismic changes as a result of automation and the COVID-19 pandemic, and combating the resulting labor market challenges has become an economic and social necessity. We believe the combination of these two industry leaders will be uniquely positioned to address these unprecedented challenges and we look forward to supporting them as they do,” said Kyle Matter who leads KKR’s Global Impact team in North America.
“Strada Education Network is a doing, learning, and sharing network. Our investment in Emsi was emblematic of this: We made the investment, learned firsthand of the value of labor market data in informing our work and that of our partners, and are now stepping aside so the newly combined organizations can have the scale, resources, and runway to deliver on their impact,” said Tom Dawson, Strada interim president and CEO. “We, in turn, will continue to focus on deploying our resources to advance our nonprofit mission of improving lives through clearer and more purposeful pathways between education and employment.”
KKR is making its follow-on investment in the combined company from its Global Impact Fund, which is focused on identifying and investing behind companies whose core business models provide commercial solutions that contribute measurable progress toward one or more of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By providing the data to drive lifelong learning and market-aligned training, Burning Glass and Emsi are delivering measurable progress in achieving two of the United Nations SDGs: Quality Education, and Decent Work and Economic Growth.
Macquarie Capital is acting as financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis as legal advisor to Burning Glass. Piper Sandler is acting as financial advisor and Taft as legal advisor to Emsi.
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