References

This database has been compiled to provide a searchable repository on published research addressing “future skills” that will be a useful tool for researchers and individuals interested in the future of work and the future of skills.

The database integrates existing bibliographies focused on future skills and the future of work as well as the results of new ProQuest and Google Scholar searches. The process of building the database also involved consultations with experts and the identification of key research organizations publishing in this area, as well as searches of those organizations’ websites. For a more detailed explanation of how the database was assembled, please read the Future Skills Reference Database Technical Note.

The current database, assembled by future skills researchers at the Diversity Institute, is not exhaustive but represents a first step in building a more comprehensive database. It will be regularly updated and expanded as new material is published and identified. In that vein, we encourage those with suggestions for improvements to this database to connect with us directly at di.fsc@ryerson.ca.

From this database, we also selected 39 key publications and created an Annotated Bibliography. It is designed to serve as a useful tool for researchers, especially Canadian researchers, who may need some initial guidance in terms of the key references in this area.

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Reference

On the treatment of persons with disabilities in organizations: A review and research agenda

Human resource practitioners play a crucial role in promoting equitable treatment of persons with disabilities, and practitioner's decisions should be guided by solid evidence-based research. We offer a systematic review of the empirical research on the treatment of persons with disabilities in organizations, using Stone and Colella's seminal theoretical model of the factors influencing the treatment of persons with disabilities in work organizations, to ask: What does the available research reveal about workplace treatment of persons with disabilities, and what remains understudied? Our review of 88 empirical studies from management, rehabilitation, psychology, and sociology research highlights seven gaps and limitations in extant research: (a) implicit definitions of workplace treatment; (b) neglect of national context variation; (c) missing differentiation between disability populations; (d) overreliance on available data sets; (e) predominance of single-source, cross-sectional data; (f) neglect of individual differences and identities in the presence of disability; and (g) lack of specificity on underlying stigma processes. To support the development of more inclusive workplaces, we recommend increased research collaborations between human resource researchers and practitioners on the study of specific disabilities and contexts, and efforts to define and expand notions of treatment to capture more nuanced outcomes.
Reference

Brain gain or brain waste? Horizontal, vertical, and full job-education mismatch and wage progression among skilled immigrant men in Canada

This study examines the incidence and wage effects of vertical, horizontal, and full job-education mismatch for high skilled immigrant and native-born men over a six-year period, using a Canadian longitudinal dataset. Immigrants (particularly racial minorities immigrants) are more likely to be fully mismatched than white native-born Canadians. Full mismatch lowers initial wages, especially for racial minority immigrants. Full mismatch accelerates immigrants' wage growth slightly over time, but this is not enough to narrow the immigrant wage gap over the six-year survey period. The results highlight the importance of disaggregating the different types of job-education mismatch experienced by immigrants.
Reference

Do large employers treat racial minorities more fairly? An analysis of Canadian field experiment data

Analysis of amended data from a large-scale Canadian employment audit study (Oreopoulos 2011) shows substantial organization size differences in discrimination against skilled applicants with Asian (Chinese, Indian, or Pakistani) names in the decision to call for an interview. In organizations with more than 500 employees, Asian-named applicants are 20 percent less likely to receive a callback; in smaller organizations, the disadvantage is nearly 40 percent. Large organizations may discriminate less frequently because of more resources in recruitment and training, more human resources development, and greater experience with diversity. Anonymized résumé review may allow organizations to test hiring procedures for discrimination fairly inexpensively.
Reference

Explaining the deteriorating entry earnings of Canada's immigrant cohorts, 1966 - 2000

Using the 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, and 2001 Canadian Censuses, we explore causes of the deterioration in entry earnings of successive cohorts of immigrant men and women. Roughly one‐third of the deterioration is explained by compositional shifts in language ability and region of birth. We find no evidence of a decline in the returns to foreign education for either immigrant men or immigrant women but a definite deterioration in the returns to foreign labour market experience, most strongly among men from non‐traditional source countries. We can explain roughly two‐thirds of the male and one‐half of the female deterioration without any reference to entry labour market conditions. When we also account for entry conditions, our results suggest Canada's immigrants of the late 1990s would otherwise have enjoyed entry earnings equal to or higher than their counterparts of the 1960s.
Reference

The skill content of recent technological change: An empirical exploration

We apply an understanding of what computers do to study how computerization alters job skill demands. We argue that computer capital (1) substitutes for workers in performing cognitive and manual tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules; and (2) complements workers in performing nonroutine problem-solving and complex communications tasks. Provided that these tasks are imperfect substitutes, our model implies measurable changes in the composition of job tasks, which we explore using representative data on task input for 1960 to 1998. We find that within industries, occupations, and education groups, computerization is associated with reduced labor input of routine manual and routine cognitive tasks and increased labor input of nonroutine cognitive tasks. Translating task shifts into education demand, the model can explain 60 percent of the estimated relative demand shift favoring college labor during 1970 to 1998. Task changes within nominally identical occupations account for almost half of this impact.
Reference

The growth of low-skill service jobs and the polarization of the US labor market

We offer a unified analysis of the growth of low-skill service occupations between 1980 and 2005 and the concurrent polarization of US employment and wages. We hypothesize that polarization stems from the interaction between consumer preferences, which favor variety over specialization, and the falling cost of automating routine, codifiable job tasks. Applying a spatial equilibrium model, we corroborate four implications of this hypothesis. Local labor markets that specialized in routine tasL · differentially adopted information technology, reallocated low-skill labor into service occupations (employment polarization), experienced earnings growth at the tails of the distribution (wage polarization), and received inflows of skilled labor
Reference

Employability and student equity in higher education: The role of university careers services

There is a pressing need to redress inequities in university completion rates and graduate outcomes. Students from low socio-economic status, regional, and Indigenous backgrounds have lower completion rates than their peers. Graduates from non-English speaking backgrounds and graduates with a disability have consistently worse employment outcomes. Despite these concerning trends, student equity remains marginal to most university employability strategies, including the provision of careers services. University careers services are a central resource for improving student employability. These services provide a range of activities such as careers education, job interview training, resumé preparation, and the sourcing of employment opportunities. Research suggests that students from equity groups underutilise careers services, despite often having the most to gain from them. We captured the professional perspectives and expertise of university careers specialists to explore: the role of careers services in improving employability and equity; and broader university strategies to redress inequitable graduate outcomes.
Reference

Becoming employable students and ideal creative workers: Exclusion and inequality in higher education work placements

In this paper we explore how the ‘employable’ student and ‘ideal’ future creative worker is prefigured, constructed and experienced through higher education work placements in the creative sector, based on a recent small-scale qualitative study. Drawing on interview data with students, staff and employers, we identify the discourses and practices through which students are produced and produce themselves as neoliberal subjects. We are particularly concerned with which students are excluded in this process. We show how normative evaluations of what makes a ‘successful’ and ‘employable’ student and ‘ideal’ creative worker are implicitly classed, raced and gendered. We argue that work placements operate as a key domain in which inequalities within both higher education and the graduate labour market are (re)produced and sustained. The paper offers some thoughts about how these inequalities might be addressed.
Reference

Ethnicity and entrepreneurship

We examine various approaches to explaining ethnic enterprise, using a framework based on three dimensions: an ethnic group's access to opportunities, the characteristics of a group, and emergent strategies. A common theme pervades research on ethnic business: Ethnic groups adapt to the resources made available by their environments, which vary substantially across societies and over time. Four issues emerge as requiring greater attention: the reciprocal relation between ethnicity and entrepreneurship, more careful use of ethnic labels and categories in research, a need for more multigroup, comparative research, and more process-oriented research designs.