Core skills – basic literacy, numeracy and socio-emotional skills – are important across all economic sectors and occupations. Figuring out who and how to address skills gaps is key to building an inclusive workforce with upward mobility.

Technology is reshaping work and how the skills ecosystem delivers skills training. Understanding technologies and learning digital skills is key to achieving inclusive growth, quality employment and shared prosperity.

Skills and labour shortages are negatively impacting our economy and our society. Employers, and especially small business owners, lack the labour market information, funding, capacity and critical partnerships to develop the solutions needed.

Many equity-seeking groups in Canada continue to face barriers to employment and career progression. Building an inclusive workforce requires addressing systemic discrimination to ensure all workers and employers can thrive.

Future-focused innovation in skills development and scaling of approaches that work is an essential component of navigating our changing labour market. Identifying and breaking down barriers to innovation will help build a cycle of continuous improvement.

With the pace of change in today’s labour market, many Canadian adults will need to shift careers, retrain or upskill. Career guidance during this transition can be crucial to their success.

Quality of work encompasses many factors that can impact the overall well-being of employees. It is an important driver of labour force participation, worker motivation and engagement, productivity and retention.

Labour market trends such as technology, shifting demographics and climate change are leading to rapid change in key sectors of our economy. Workers and employers will require support from the skills ecosystem to successfully manage these transitions.

As Canada advances its net-zero targets, we need a skills and training agenda to support both a net-positive job growth in the economy and transitioning at-risk workers in sectors that will decline.