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Rising Concerns About the Impact of New Technologies on Employment

Technological change has continually reshaped the Canadian workplace over the past three decades. The rapid pace of change continues with the proliferation of AI tools and technology in the workplace. One of the original goals of the Survey on Employment and Skills, launched in 2020, was to explore experiences with the changing nature of work in Canada. According to the results of recent waves of the survey, Canadian workers are becoming increasingly concerned about the pace of change and the potential automation of their work.

Concerns about the potential impact of new technologies in the workplace are nothing new. But the ongoing changes and disruptions sparked by the introduction and growing use of AI tools at work appear to be having an unsettling effect. The proportion of Canadian workers who are worried about losing their job in the coming years because the work they do will soon be done by computers or robots has increased, and this cannot be accounted for simply by pointing to growing pessimism about the economy in general. Rather, there is a more direct relationship between concerns about the impact of automation on employment, and the use of AI programs at work.

Read the latest bulletin from the Survey on Employment and Skills to find out more about how Canadian workers are responding to the changing nature of work.

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Key insights

Forty-eight per cent of those who have used AI to help with tasks at work agree that they find it hard to keep up with the changes at work that have been caused by new
information or computer technologies, compared to 33% of those who have not used AI.

Fifty per cent of those who have used AI to help with tasks at work agree that they worry that they might lose
their job in the coming years because the work they do will soon be automated, compared to 33% of those who have not used AI.

The proportion of employed Canadians who agree that “my workplace has been too slow to adapt to the opportunities offered by new information or computer technologies” has increased from 39% to 47%.

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