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Skills for Productivity, Prosperity and Well-Being in Canada: A Canadian PIAAC Research Agenda

Canada is in the midst of a productivity and growth challenge. Part of the issue is skills. While Canada has one of the most highly educated populations in the world, the distribution and use of skills across the adult population is uneven. This is evident in results from the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessments of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) – an international survey of hundreds of thousands of adults, including nearly 40,000 in Canada, over two cycles of data collection. New PIAAC data released at the end of 2024 provides Canada with an opportunity to improve understanding of relationships among skills, productivity, prosperity and well-being, and to use that knowledge to design better policies and programs.

Researchers using PIAAC data have generated useful insights that have informed skills policies and programs across Canada. However, attention to PIAAC has fluctuated over the years. Many appear interested only in PIAAC as a once-a-decade snapshot of Canada’s relative global standing on skills. Not seeing any glaring problems with Canada’s ranking, attention predictably wanes. This is unfortunate as PIAAC has substantial, longer-term value: By using PIAAC data to better understand who has skills, how they are used, and how they change over time, researchers can help us identify strengths, gaps and areas for improvements in skills policies and programs.

In this report, we provide an overview of the PIAAC survey and data, including its limitations, to orient users to its potential and weaknesses. We present the results of a systematic review of Canadian-focused studies that use PIAAC, highlighting key findings as well as gaps and unanswered questions. Drawing on insights from the literature review, interviews, and gap analysis, we then present a Canadian PIAAC Research Agenda including topics and enabling conditions for using the data, conducting research, and sharing results.

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