White Paper

Canada requires a high-performing post-secondary education (PSE) sector to produce people with the advanced skills and knowledge necessary to contribute to economic, social, political and individual well-being. Although Canada’s PSE sector has performed relatively well to date on many measures, we can do much better. More attention needs to be focused on the quality of skills being produced to meet and address current and future economic and social opportunities and challenges. Skills—Where Are We Today? The State of Skills and PSE in Canada provides a systems perspective on the state of skills and higher education in Canada and identifies areas where the sector could improve in producing highly skilled graduates. It is one of three foundational studies for the Centre for Skills and Post-Secondary Education that, together, offer the first steps in a diagnosis of the sector and its performance.

Pour améliorer ses systèmes de perfectionnement professionnel, de formation et d’apprentissage continu, le Canada devrait : 1. Mettre l’accent sur les compétences de base, sans lesquelles les travailleurs ont du mal à acquérir de nouvelles compétences et de nouvelles connaissances; 2. Améliorer l’équité et l’inclusion en matière de possibilités de formation et de perfectionnement professionnel; 3. Encourager le partage des coûts entre les entreprises, les travailleurs et le gouvernement; 4. Favoriser le partage d’information entre les établissements d’enseignement, les entreprises, les syndicats et les autres parties prenantes, ainsi que l’analyse rigoureuse de cette information; 5. Faire le suivi de l’efficacité des programmes.

Skills gaps cost the Ontario economy up to $24.3 billion in foregone GDP—a result of too many Ontarians not obtaining enough education to find employment in today’s economy. Skills gaps are projected to worsen if action is not taken to address them, and fears about a future of “jobs without people” and “people without jobs” are widespread. However, little has been done to examine the true economic costs of Ontario’s skills gaps and what can be done to prevent a skills crisis. To address a lack of information, the Conference Board undertook a major study of skills gaps in Ontario, including a survey of over 1,500 Ontario employers.

As Canada improves its systems of skill development, training and lifelong learning, it should: 1. Emphasize foundational skills, without which workers struggle to learn new skills and knowledge; 2. Improve equity and inclusion of training and skill development opportunities; 3. Encourage cost-sharing among industry, workers and government; 4. Encourage information-sharing among educational institutions, industry, unions and other stakeholders, and sound analysis of that information; and 5. Track program effectiveness.

Survey data quality is influenced by the care and attention that respondents take in answering questions. Careless and inattentive (CI) responding is a confound in survey data that can distort findings and lead to incorrect conclusions. This quantitative study explored CI responding in job analysis studies supporting occupational certification programs and its relationship to survey features, data quality measures, and test content validity. Satisficing theory served as the framework, and secondary analysis of 3 job analysis surveys was undertaken. Results indicated that 9-33% of respondents engaged in CI responding, with the rate differing by CI index used (Mahalanobis distance, long string analysis, or person-total correlation) and by occupation. Each index detected a distinct pattern of carelessness, supporting the use of multiple indices. The indices performed best detecting carelessness in frequency ratings and may not be useful for all job analysis rating scales. Partial support was found for relationships between carelessness and survey features. CI responding had a minimal impact on mean ratings, correlations, and interrater reliability, and had no impact on certification test content outlines. By providing guidance and caution on the use of CI response detection methods with job analysis survey data, this study produced two potential avenues for social change. For practitioners conducting occupational job analyses, the use of CI detection methods can enhance the validity of data used to make certification decisions. For researchers, follow-up studies can yield a more nuanced understanding of the most appropriate use of these methods in the job analysis context.

In this report, we attempt to answer them. To do so, we developed two unique fact bases. The first is an analysis of more than 100 education-to-employment initiatives from 25 countries, selected on the basis of their innovation and effectiveness. The second is a survey of youth, education providers, and employers in nine countries that are diverse in geography and socioeconomic context: Brazil, Germany, India, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We started this research recognizing the twin crises of a shortage of jobs and a shortage of skills. In the course of it, though, we realized we needed to take into account another key shortage: the lack of hard data. This deficiency makes it difficult to even begin to understand which skills are required for employment, what practices are the most promising in training youth to become productive citizens and employees, and how to identify the programs that do this best. The state of the world’s knowledge about education-to-employment is akin to that regarding school-system reform a dozen years ago, prior to ground-breaking international assessments and related research. We hope this report helps fill this knowledge gap.

This article in the Economic Insights series provides users with an integrated summary of long-term changes in several characteristics of the jobs held by Canadian employees. The article assesses the evolution of median real hourly wages in all jobs, full-time jobs and part-time jobs, as well as the evolution of layoff rates. It also examines changes in the percentage of jobs that are full-time; permanent; full-time and permanent; unionized; in public administration, educational services, health care and social assistance; covered by a registered pension plan (RPP); and covered by a defined-benefit RPP. Unless otherwise noted, statistics are shown for the main job held by employees aged 17 to 64 in May of each year and cover the period from 1981 to 2018. The main job is the job with the most weekly work hours. Full-time jobs involve 30 hours or more per week.

This briefing reviews the evidence on the integration of migrants into the UK labour market. It illustrates the potential benefits of utilising migrants’ untapped skills to the UK economy. While compared to other European countries the UK has a relatively good record on getting migrants into work, it could make far better use of migrants’ skills, experiences and qualifications. According to our estimates, addressing over-qualification could add around £7 billion to the UK’s annual economic output. There is therefore a strong economic case for a new programme of investment in labour market integration – including in English language proficiency, which our research suggests is associated with poor labour market outcomes such as over-qualification.

Anxiety about labour shortages due to population aging, which prevailed in the mid-2000s, has been replaced by anxiety about automation. Concerns that new waves of technological changes, fuelled by advances in robotics and artificial intelligence, will lead to massive unemployment have been expressed in recent years. These concerns are not new. Every wave of technological change has led to concerns about technological unemployment.