White Paper

This working paper examines Ontario's changing labour market and skills, employer-driven training, and government skills training programs. Ontario's labour market has changed. For Ontarians to remain resilient in face of this change, they must be equipped with skills that are transferable across occupations and sectors. The main findings include that most workplace spending on training is concentrated among large, private-sector firms and for highly educated individuals, and that Employment Ontario programs have not kept pace with the changing labour market. The working paper proposes ten recommendations for employers, government, and educational institutions to prepare Ontario's workforce to be resilient in the face of current and future labour market shifts.

Employees’ ability to influence decisions at work is one of the most important factors affecting their motivation and psychological well-being and is also associated with good physical health. This report examines the trends in different types of employee control in British workplaces and presents a mixed picture. Overall, the level of task discretion (employees’ immediate control over their work tasks) has been stable since 2001, following a sharp decline in the 1990s. But the trends since 2006 have been different for men and women, with women seeing a small rise, and men a further fall in task discretion. There was a rise in the proportion of employees working in semi-autonomous teams (those with significant control over their work activities) from 14% in 2006 to 18% in 2012. This rise reverses a previous long-term decline. Between 2006 and 2012 there was also a rise in the proportion of jobs using self-managed teams, from 4% to 7%. Halting a previous upward trend, there has been little change between 2006 and 2012 in formal provisions for participation in wider organisational decisions. Yet, the proportion of employees who report that they have a great deal or quite a lot of say over work organisation declined from 36% to 27% between 2001 and 2012.

A review of social protection today provides examples of systems that help people who need support and help reduce the gaps in social provisions.

Cognitive skills, such as reading and numeric skills, are key determinants of wages, employment and long-term economic growth. Good cognitive skills also reduce poverty risk and improve non-material wellbeing, such as health and social cohesion. Non-cognitive skills, such as skills to use information and communication technology as well as managerial skills, also help workers adapt to new technologies and globalisation. In Germany cognitive skills among adults are above OECD average, but weaker than in leading economies, especially among individuals with low and middle qualifications. Much progress has been made to improve learning outcomes of youth with disadvantaged socio-economic background. Nonetheless, high-quality childcare, early childhood and full-day primary education still need to expand. The vocational education system is very successful in integrating young people well in the labour market. Strengthening general education within the successful vocational education and training system could help ensure the capacity of graduates to adapt to technological change at higher age in the future. Participation in life-long learning could be encouraged by better addressing individual training needs. This could improve prospects for adults without professional qualifications. Women's skills are used less well than men's, calling for policies to address gender imbalances in the labour market.

Results from the first UK-wide employer skills survey. Covers training and staff development, vacancies unfilled because of skills shortages, gaps in employees’ skills and recruitment of education leavers. Provides a comprehensive and robust picture of skills needs and training investment in UK businesses by country, size and sector.

The Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA) undertook to identify whether there is a skills gap in Ontario, and if so, what particular skills are missing. Through its own unique research, the HRPA has found that various soft skills are missing from the skillset of entry-level workers today, not the hard skills that are easiest for employers to teach. The development of soft skills continues to be a focus of Ontario’s high school curriculum. These skills have been a measurable outcome on report cards since 1998 and are critical to building a competitive workforce for the 21st century. Without a strong foundation of soft skills developed in high school, students have challenges that progress through higher levels of learning and into the workforce. With this in mind, this paper explores whether gaps between the current Ontario high school curriculum and employability may be a root cause of this skills challenge, and whether students are being taught the way employers need them to be taught. It provides quantitative evidence directly from employers that a soft skills gap does indeed exist. Based on this discovery, the paper makes a series of recommendations on how this soft skill gap can be closed.

Recently, there have been many concerns raised in Canada about labour market shortages and the aging of the labour force. Various potential solutions to these problems have been discussed, including reliance on immigration and retaining older workers in the work force. Within this discussion little attention has been paid to another potential resource—the Aboriginal population. Compared to the general Canadian population, the Aboriginal population is young and growing, and it has the potential to partially meet some of the emerging labour market. In some parts of the country, the Aboriginal population makes up a significant share of the potential labour force, especially when demographic trends are projected into the future. In order to fully take advantage of this resource, however, continued improvements will be needed in the education and training of the Aboriginal population. This chapter illustrates another cost associated with lower educational attainment for Aboriginal peoples.

We quantify the amount of spatial misallocation of labor across US cities and its aggregate costs. Misallocation arises because high productivity cities like New York and the San Francisco Bay Area have adopted stringent restrictions to new housing supply, effectively limiting the number of workers who have access to such high productivity. Using a spatial equilibrium model and data from 220 metropolitan areas we find that these constraints lowered aggregate US growth by more than 50% from 1964 to 2009.

The UK Commission for Employment and Skills commissioned a qualitative evaluation across a range of investments, including projects funded under the first two rounds of the Growth and Innovation Fund (GIF) and the second phase of the Employer Investment Fund (EIF). The evaluation was undertaken from November 2012 to April 2013. It was based primarily around a qualitative case study approach. There were 10 case studies looking at investment fund projects (five EIF 2 case studies; and five GIF projects, including three GIF 1 case studies and two GIF 2 case studies) and 10 case studies on standards and framework products. In addition to the case studies, the research also included interviews with organisations that were recipients of development funding and/ or support and advice introduced as part of the GIF 2 development phase. This report presents the findings of the investment case studies and interviews with organisations that received development funding and / or support and advice. A separate report presents the findings from the standards and framework case studies.