The changing skill structure of employment in Canada

This paper presents a short synthesis of recent findings on the changing skill structure of employment and on some of the sources of change emerging from Human Resources Development Canada’s research programme on the theme of “Skills Requirements in the Knowledge-Based Economy.” It addresses three main questions: How has the skill structure of employment evolved in Canada? What has been the role of technological change in the changing structure of employment? Do the skills of the Canadian workforce meet the requirements of the knowledge-based economy? The bulk of the paper examines the changing structure of employment using an occupational classification scheme that categorizes occupations on the basis of the tasks performed by workers. This approach was originally developed by Wolff and Baumol and adapted for Canada by Marie Lavoie and Richard Roy in the paper “Employment in the Knowledge-Based Economy: A Growth Accounting Exercise for Canada.”