White Paper

When it comes to attracting immigrants, Canada is a success story. In August, the OECD called our labour migration system comprehensive and responsive--a global model for immigration management. That reputation hasn't only reached other governments. In a recent Gallup poll, 6% of potential immigrants named Canada as their top desired destination, more than Germany, France, and Australia, and second only to the U.S. Pretty good for a country of 37 million with a long winter. While Canada is drawing in some of the best and brightest, especially due to an increased focus on highly skilled, educated immigrants, our success in integrating those newcomers into the labour force falls short, at least on one key measure: earnings. Even as the balance of immigrants has shifted towards those with more skills and education, immigrants aren't being fully rewarded by the labour market for the attributes that got them accepted in the first place. They earn around 10% less on average than Canadian-born peers. The immigrant wage gap is broad-based. And it's persistent: it has widened over three decades. That's a red flag for a country that already has the highest proportion of immigrants to total population in the G7. Immigrants make up 22% of Canada's population now, a number that's expected to rise to 28% by 2036. The immigrant wage gap is costly. Our research suggests bringing immigrants up to the wage levels and employment of those born in Canada would produce substantial economic benefits--maybe as much as 2.5% in annual GDP, about $50 billion.

[This report comes acrosss 5] recurring themes, which unify the substantive recommendations in our report. The first is the challenge of obtaining meaningful information for the labour market, which in many cases has become global even while many of its aspects remain local. The second is the existence of basic information gaps even at an aggregated level. The third is the existence of parallel, but separate universes, between the supply and demand for LMI in terms of the granularity of the information (suppliers largely providing aggregate information and demanders wanting detailed occupational and geographic information that can be used to match labour supply and demand). The fourth is the need to pull together LMI from many fragmented and disparate sources. And the fifth is the need to improve public awareness and the user friendliness of LMI.

This bulletin discusses the multiple barriers and discriminations that racialized groups face in the labour market. Results from this study indicate that racialized people living in the Black Creek area face numerous systemic barriers, discrimination and challenges.

As tasks are automated and job roles and responsibilities evolve, human qualities are the new essential for the workforce and the workplace. We've looked into why certain people - and certain groups of people - tend to be more successful than others. Human empathy, attitude andsoft skills' are the common threads. Learn why soft skills could be the make it or break it.

In April 2015, the Business Council of Canada established the Business/ Higher Education Roundtable (BHER), a national forum comprising 27 leaders from business, universities, colleges and polytechnics. BHER works to support young Canadians as they transition from education to the workplace, strengthen research collaboration between industry and institutions, and help Canadian employers as they adapt to the economy of the future. The Roundtable identified two priority initiatives with the following goals: Help young Canadians make the transition from school to work through collaborative partnerships between the business community and post-secondary institutions and promoting practice-based learning opportunities for students; Strengthen research, development and innovation partnerships between Canadian companies and post-secondary institutions. The Roundtable has engaged Academica Group, a higher education consultancy, to examine: The scope of work-integrated learning available at post-secondary institutions in Canada; The extent to which post-secondary students participate in workrelated programs; Best practices in the design and implementation of work-integrated learning programs. This report reviews the extensive academic research on these topics. It outlines numerous challenges that have emerged in the field of workintegrated learning in Canada. It also identifies a number of practices and recommendations that could alleviate these concerns and promote a highquality, high-value experience for students.

T here are a number of major trends that have the potential to shape the future of work, from climate change and resource scarcity to demographic shifts resulting from an aging population and immigration. This report focuses on the need to prepare Canada’s youth for a future where a great number of jobs will be rapidly created, altered or made obsolete by technology.Successive waves of technological advancements have rocked global economies for centuries, reconfiguring the labour force and giving rise to new economic opportunities with each wave. Modern advances, including artificial intelligence and robotics, once again have the potential to transform the economy, perhaps more rapidly and more dramatically than ever before. As past pillars of Canada’s economic growth become less reliable, harnessing technology and innovation will become increasingly important in driving productivity and growth. The primary burden of realizing this enormous opportunity rests on the shoulders of Canada’s young people. To succeed in the knowledge economy, the pipeline of young talent will need to be dynamic and resilient, equipped with a broad suite of technical and soft skills. While youth are always the cornerstone of a country’s future workforce, the rapid pace of technology-driven change makes the task of effectively integrating them into the labour force more challenging—and more critical—than ever before. Failure to do so will not only inhibit Canada’s economic growth, but may result in a large swath of the population being left behind in the knowledge economy. Youth are entering a labour market where job requirements are becoming more complex. Entrylevel jobs are at a high risk of being impacted by automation, yet work experience is more important than ever. At the same time, underemployment, part-time, and precarious work are becoming more prevalent. As a result, it is becoming more challenging for youth to seamlessly enter the labour force.These issues are particularly salient for youth facing multiple barriers to labour force participation and for those who have traditionally been underrepresented in knowledge-based industries— including women and indigenous youth—some of whom represent the fastest growing segments of our population. The good news is that Canada has a strong foundation with some of the highest rates of educational attainment in the world, 4 and a tech sector that has never been stronger. 5 Canadian youth are highly skilled, well-educated, entrepreneurial and arguably among the best suited to adapt to the complex skills required for the future of work. No one sector can address this challenge alone. As Canada begins to focus more deliberately on inclusive economic growth, it is paramount that the country’s public, private and non-profit sectors work together to ensure that Canadian youth have the skills and experience to benefit from and drive technological progress. This report illustrates the need for urgent attention to be paid to this issue. It will start by describing some of the technological trends that are reshaping the future of work, and the challenges and opportunities they present for youth. It will explain the impact of these trends on the skills and experience that will be increasingly demanded of youth entering the workforce. Finally, it will outline potential avenues that can be explored to help ensure Canada’s youth are well-positioned to thrive and prosper in the future.

[This study] uses [data from the Survey of Adult Skills] to better understand the impact of literacy and numeracy skills on employment outcomes for immigrants. This provides a different angle to study immigrant labour outcomes based on objectively measured skill levels separate from other measures of human capital (e.g., educational attainment and field of study). The questions that informed the study were: 1. What is the impact of immigrant status on various employment outcomes? 2. What is the impact of various possible controlling factors such as demographics and human capital? 3.What is the impact of numeracy test scores? 4. What is the impact of literacy test scores?

In the wake of the 2016 election, Opportunity America convened a bipartisan study group, cosponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution, to consider the challenges facing working-class communities and craft a set of policy solutions. In November 2018, the group released its final report, Work, skills, community: Restoring opportunity for the working class – a slate of bipartisan proposals to create jobs, train and retrain workers and revitalize blue-collar communities.

TWC, in collaboration with the national Workforce Information Council, conducted a survey of employers in 2015. Employers were asked to estimate cost and availability of data, and results were broken down by firm size. The survey showed significant concern among employers about mandating submission of additional occupational data via unemployment insurance tax returns. Those concerns covered numerous topics. However, implementation costs and compliance-burden issues were most often mentioned. TWC estimates that the initial cost to employers could range from $478 million to $1.2 billion, with annual recurring costs of $342 million to $715 million.