Signs of the times: Expert insights about employment in 2030

Canada’s labour market is undergoing changes, but what does the future hold? With a range of technological, environmental, and political trends driving change, which ones should Canadians pay attention to most? Signs of the Times: Expert insights about employment in 2030 offers a look at how a range of experts across Canada are thinking about the future of employment, ideas about possible new jobs, as well as which trends they believe are most likely to create change. This report aims to provide guidance to Canadian policy makers, educators, employers, students, and workers about what the future of Canada’s labour market may hold. Signs of the Times is the second report to be released as part of the Brookfield Institute’s Employment in 2030 initiative. Building on previous work conducted by project partner Nesta, Employment in 2030 uses futures research, expert workshops, and machine learning algorithms to project the skills most likely to be in demand in 2030 across Canada. The first phase of this initiative resulted in Turn and Face the Strange, a report that outlines 31 broad trends with the potential to impact Canada’s labour market. This research was used to frame the next phase of the project: six workshops held across Canada, inviting a range of diverse experts to share how they expect select occupations might change in the next 10–15 years. The insights we gathered from the experts are shared in this report, while data from these workshops will inform the last phase of the project: data analysis using machine learning algorithms to project these impacts across the labour market, shedding light on the skills most likely to be in demand. The findings from this final phase will be shared in a third report, which is set for release in 2020.