Future of work
A curated resource of recent research on trends shaping Canada's labour market.
This research explores skills vacancies in Canada and estimates their unrealized economic value. In this study, job vacancies are defined as skill-set vacancies, identified by disaggregating job vacancies through expected skills for each job.
The unrealized value of each skill is then calculated using the annual salary associated with each occupation. The cost of these skill vacancies has grown from an estimated $15 billion in 2016 to $25 billion in 2020 — approximately 1.33% of Canada’s GDP. Furthermore, the cost of vacancies requiring soft skills such as active listening, critical thinking, reading comprehension, speaking, monitoring and coordination alone surpassed $6 billion.
The findings also show that social and emotional skills are highly ranked. These same skills topped the list six years in a row, suggesting systemic challenges in closing skill gaps.