White Paper

While Canada faces labour shortages due to a declining birthrate and aging population, many Canadians experience obstacles to employment and are underemployed relative to their educational and professional backgrounds. This report summarizes current data on employment outcomes for racialized Canadians and for recent immigrants to Canada, reviews the literature that seeks to explain these gaps and analyzes studies of programming and policy designed to close these gaps — including in the areas of settlement and bridging. While much is known about the problem itself, solutions to date have been fragmented.

Training for working Canadians is scarce, and the people who most need it are the least able to get it. As global competition and technological change increase, Canada needs to create effective and inclusive systems of training, which are essential for innovation, growth, employment and good incomes. In this report, Daniel Munro looks at Canada's strengths and weaknesses, training models from around the world, and suggests improvements to lifelong learning system

Workplace accommodations such as flexible work schedules or workstation modifications can play an important role in creating an inclusive and accessible work environment for many employees with disabilities. This fact sheet presents findings from the 2017 Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD) on requirements and access to workplace accommodations for employees with disabilities aged 25 to 64 years. It explores: the different types and number of accommodations commonly required in the workplace; whether those needs were met; and, the reasons why, in some instances, needs for accommodations went unmet. The key findings are: Of employees with disabilities aged 25 to 64 years, more than 1 in 3 (37%) required at least one workplace accommodation to be able to work. This represented just over 772,000 Canadians. The most commonly required type of workplace accommodations were flexible work arrangements (27%), workstation modifications (15%), and human or technical supports (6%). Employees with “more severe” disabilities (62%) were twice as likely to require workplace accommodations compared to those with “less severe” disabilities (29%). Of those who required workplace accommodations: 59% had all of their needs met, 19% had some of their needs met, and 21% had none of their needs met. The more workplace accommodations required, the less likely all needs were met. Of those who required only one accommodation, 75% had their need met; however, this drops to 36% when they required three or more. Of those with at least one unmet need for workplace accommodations: 69% said that they did not make the request for them to their employer or supervisor. Of these, 36% said their employer or supervisor was already aware they needed them. Of those with at least one unmet need for workplace accommodations: 25% said they did make a request for them to their employer or supervisor. However, 40% were refused their request.

Using the Davos theme of Globalisation 4.0, PwC tells a compelling story of CEOs' external world view on growth, what that means inside their organisations, and the constraints on their organisations' push for growth against those external headwinds. PwC uses its historic data set to demonstrate shifts and trends, as well as to paint a persuasive picture of business playing a primary role in the realignment of economies and society.

Field-of-study mismatch occurs when workers educated in a particular field work in another. It is conceptually distinct from qualifications or skills mismatch, although a part of qualifications and skills mismatch results from graduates from a particular field having to downgrade to find work in another field. Some studies have identified labour market dynamics related to field-of-study mismatch, but few (if any) have sought to directly understand the interplay between labour supply factors (the types of skills brought to the workplace) and the labour demand factors (the types of skills demanded by employers) in field-of-study mismatch. Using data from the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies' Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), this paper shows that although students may choose to specialise in a particular field, it is not solely up to them to actually work in that field. In accordance with assignment theories, both the degree of saturation of a particular field in the labour market and the level of generic skills of a particular field predict the occurrence of field-of-study mismatch, highlighting that mismatch is the result of both labour supply- and demand-side factors. The paper then evaluates the costs to individuals - in terms of wages, risk of being out of work and job satisfaction. Findings suggest that the costs of field-of-study mismatch may only be high in terms of individual earnings when it is associated to qualification mismatch. For economies, field-of-study mismatch, when associated with qualifications mismatch, can amount to important costs, meriting the attention of policy makers to better aligning course places to skill needs or by encouraging skill transferability across fields.

The Great Recession and subsequent recovery have been particularly painful for low-skilled workers. From 2007 to 2012, the unemployment rate rose by 6.4 percentage points for noncollege workers while it rose by only 2.3 percentage points for the college educated. This differential impact was evident within occupations as well. One explanation for the differential impact may be the ability of highly skilled workers to take middle- and low-skilled jobs. Indeed, over this period the share of workers with a college degree in traditionally middle-skill occupations increased rapidly. Such growth in skill requirements within occupations has become known colloquially as upskilling." It is not clear from employment outcomes alone whether the increasing share of high-skilled workers in middle- and low-skill occupations reflects changing behavior by employers. Few researchers have been able to quantify rising employer requirements due to the difficulty in isolating labor demand from labor supply. In this paper using a novel dataset of online job vacancy postings the authors tackle the question of whether the education and experience requirements for job postings have risen between 2007 and 2012 and if so whether this rise was driven by the state of the local labor market.

Key findings: The construction industry is one of the big beneficiaries of higher carbon prices over the next few years. By 2025, higher carbon prices will spur a wave of investment in new construction, generating jobs and income. Income in the construction industry is over $2.5 billion higher in 2025 with aggressive carbon pricing than with the status quo. An additional 19,000 jobs in construction would be created due to higher carbon prices, and another 20,500 net new jobs would be created in other sectors of the economy. Saskatchewan sees the highest proportion of new jobs created in construction from high carbon prices, followed by Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, Alberta, and British Columbia. Stringent carbon prices create an additional $12.5 billion in business investment in 2025 and $5.7 billion in increased household spending, led by consumer spending (on things such as new home construction and retrofits). This would be followed by renewable energy, carbon capture and storage, commercial construction, and building efficiency projects. Overall, the major economic impact of higher carbon prices is to shift economic activity, which is consistent with other studies. The construction industry is a net beneficiary of these shifts in the medium-term.

While much of the world is understandably focused on the current recession,there is a looming demographic and labour market crisis which has the potential to shake the very foundations of our society and economy.Our population is aging; as the baby boomer generation advances into the age of normal retirement,there will be a significant decline in the proportion of our population in the prime working years (15 to 64).Using Human Resources and Skills Development Canada and Statistics Canada data,the projected shortfall in the availability of workers is shown to rise to at least 1.4 million and to as high as 3.9 million by 2031, depending on our levels of population growth. Even in the midst of a recession,we have to understand that a labour shortage looms. Unfortunately,this is only half of the bad news. At the same time as our population is aging,the requirements of the labour market are changing. With the emergence of the knowledge economy, the proportion of the labour force requiring some form of education or training beyond high school will increase dramatically.Using a variety of Canadian and U. S. estimates, it is concluded thatby 2031 we will need 77% of our workforce to have post-secondary credentials (apprenticeship, university, college, industry, professional).Overall, we now stand at about 60%,with our younger population (25 to 34 years of age) at just over 66%. So,we will need both a larger workforce and increased skills.For potentialsolutions, increasing the size of the population (immigration) with more skilled workers could help, but it will not solve the problem. Increasing the participation rates of those currently under-represented in the labour force is another option that needs to be explored, as do ways of accelerating graduations, increasing employer-provided training,improving literacy rates,and creating a moreunifiededucationalsystem. But what is most clearly needed is a change in our society's attitude towards post-secondary education. We have to accept attainment of post-secondary education or training as the expectation for all but a small minority of Canadians. Without effective action,we face a future with large numbers of unskilled workers looking for jobs that require skills they do not possess, and a large number of jobs that will go unfilled. The time for action is now. It will take planning, hard work, cooperation, and difficult decisions to secure our future.An alternative outcome is simply unacceptable.