Future of work

The study provides supply and demand projections for 14 engineering occupations. It highlights a large and growing need to replace retiring engineers as they exit the workforce. This is particularly relevant for civil, mechanical, electrical and electronic engineers as well as computer engineers. In most of the occupations, international in-migration is expected to be high over the next five years. The report provides projections for supply and demand of 14 engineering occupations (by 4-digit NOC code) based on a workforce requirements approach. The study first tracks engineering graduates in each of the 14 fields for each province from 2000 to 2013 and then looks at two aggregate employment projections for each engineering occupation in each province over the 2015-19 and 2020-22 periods.

A labour market tightness ranking is generated for each occupation to give an overview of the relative risk across occupations for obtaining their estimated supply requirements. Rank 1 corresponds to excess supply and 2 represents normal market situation whereby employers can fulfill their employment needs through normal methods whereas rank 3 corresponds to excess demand during which employers need to make special efforts to attract normal workers.

The results suggest that most provinces will experience normal labour market tightness for the engineering occupations assessed in the future (i.e., rank 2 for civil engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical and electronic engineers, chemical engineers, industrial and manufacturing engineers, metallurgical and materials engineers, mining engineers, geological engineers, petroleum engineers, aerospace engineers, computer engineering, other engineers, engineering managers, and software engineers). Only a small number of provinces are expected to experience excess demand in certain years over the medium term.