Techniques for inferring data to improve the accuracy and completeness of information retrieval are disclosed herein. In some embodiments, a data inference system detects a lack of employment type data for a profile of a user on an online service, with the employment type data identifying at least one type of employment in which the user is interested. In some embodiments, based on the detecting of the lack of employment type data for the profile of the user, the data inference system generates the employment type data based on an inference model and inference data, with the inference data comprising at least one of profile data of the user and a history of the user's interactions with the online service, and the data inference system performs a function of the online service using the generated employment type data.