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.

Over the past five decades, the percentage of the working-age population migrating to other provinces has fallen from roughly 2% in the early 1970s to roughly 1% in 2015 (Chart 1). Part of the drop likely reflects the growing number of older workers in the labour force—such workers are less mobile than their younger counterparts. However, the aging of the workforce cannot fully account for this trend, since interprovincial mobility has also dropped within age–gender cells. For example, men aged 35 to 39 experienced a very similar drop in interprovincial mobility during the same period (Chart 1). Because regional differences in unemployment rates are persistent (Chart 2), economists have long analyzed the factors that might inhibit or foster labour mobility in Canada (see, among others, Courchene 1970, 1984; Grant and Vanderkamp 1976; Vanderkamp 1968, 1971; Gomez and Gunderson 2007; and Day and Winer 2012) and have discussed whether labour mobility in Canada is sufficiently high. It is generally accepted that spatial differences in earnings growth and employment opportunities might induce greater labour mobility from economically depressed areas to dynamic areas, while relatively generous transfer payments in high-unemployment areas might inhibit such mobility. While economic theory has long emphasized the potential role that regional differences in employment, wages and the social safety net might play, another branch of the literature has documented a robust positive association between social capital (e.g., family, friends, community ties and neighbourhood) and well-being (Helliwell and Putnam 2004; Helliwell, Layard and Sachs 2012). If this positive association partly captures the causal impact of social capital on individuals’ well-being, and if labour mobility entails—at least temporarily—a disruption of one’s social capital, then having a strong social network might reduce one’s willingness to move to new areas. Hence, social as well as economic factors might act as barriers to labour mobility.

Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) are the government programs that help un- and underemployed workers improve their skills and find jobs. Collectively, they make up the public employment service. They can be crucial to protecting individuals from the pernicious, cyclical effects of long-term unemployment. But the framework for ALMPs in Canada has not kept pace with changes to the labour market. This should be a major concern. Structural changes to the economy are underway, including a shift away from manufacturing and towards gig and part-time work, and ongoing impacts from automation across sectors. We need a functioning public employment service, and this starts with better, more rational federal-provincial collaboration. ALMPs are a joint federal-provincial responsibility. Since the mid-90s, provinces have been the central actors, while the federal government funds programs through a number of transfer agreements. The largest transfers, Labour Market Development Agreements (LMDAs), are funded from Employment Insurance (EI) premiums, and provide skills training programs only to workers who are currently or were recently eligible for EI. This is an increasingly smaller proportion of unemployed Canadians. Moreover, the allocation of funds among provinces is unfair and unprincipled, creating greater inequity between unemployed Canadians. With the federal government announcing new investments in the public employment service, the time is ripe for reform and re-engagement. In this report, we outline the current ALMP framework, including all the major existing program streams. We examine the existing international and Canadian evidence on ALMPs. We then identify five major challenges to the Canadian framework.

This paper argues that economic activity and work cannot be understood independently from the natural environment in which they take place. Indeed, two major trends related to the natural environment – current and future environmental degradation on the one hand, and the push towards environmental sustainability on the other – will define the future of work and social justice. Environmental degradation negatively affects the world of work given the tight linkages it has with the natural environment, notably through the loss of ecosystem services, the occurrence of natural disasters and the inequalities related to the exposure to environmental degradation and its associated risks. Efforts to advance environmental sustainability will disrupt the world of work through a reallocation, since achieving sustainability is akin to a structural transformation. Importantly, however, efforts to advance sustainability are compatible with employment opportunities and with the promotion of decent work; sustainability is not a job killer. In all, this paper contends that a good future for work requires a stable and healthy environment. It contends that such future requires attention to environmental degradation and protection for workers and communities from it. The paper calls for a development and economic model that underscores environmental and social outcomes and ensures that the transition towards sustainability is just.