LMI Most Needed by Canadians
Top Four Most Cited LMI Needs by Respondent Group (Percentage)
Note: Respondents were asked to select from a set of 14 types of information they might seek when making a career-related decision. Each group were asked a question related to their situation (e.g., for employed: what LMI you sought when looking for your current job). The percentages reflect the share of respondents who selected that answer. The colour of the boxes indicates the frequency with which respondents in each group selected the information listed (darker = most common; lightest = fourth most common).
A top priority outlined in LMIC’s Strategic Plan is to enhance the availability and relevance of the labour market information (LMI) that Canadians use and want. In order to identify those needs, we decided to ask Canadians. Our findings reveal that the most commonly required LMI is on wages and skill requirements.
Beginning in August 2018, we asked a wide variety of Canadians a series of questions about their LMI needs, including the types of information Canadians use. The first set of results focuses on five groups: employed people, unemployed people, persons with disabilities, recent immigrants, and recent university and college graduates. (More detail about how we conducted these surveys can be found here).
Across all five groups, wages were identified as the most common LMI need: 68% of employed people, 66% of recent graduates, 62% of recent immigrants, 55% of persons with disabilities and 50% of unemployed people said they rely on wage and salary information, when possible. For three of those groups - persons with disabilities, recent graduates and unemployed people - the second most common LMI need is to know the skill requirements for jobs. Employed people identified job benefits as their second most common need, whereas recent immigrants highlighted the need for cost-of-living information.
Moving forward, our aim is to improve our understanding of how best to put the most-used and most-sought information in the hands of Canadians, recognizing the diverse ways that different groups may use to consume the same information (for more, see LMIC’s Operational Plan). LMIC is also striving to bring clarity to the measurement of skills and skills shortages and is delving into research on how skills developed through education and training impact labour market outcomes.
Check out the survey dashboard and previous LMI Insights Issue No. 5 on the difficulty in finding LMI: Is it Difficult to Find Information That Helps Career-Related Decisions?, Issue No. 6 on the difficulty understanding LMI: Easily Understood LMI is Essential for Making Informed Career Decisions, Issue No. 7 on the impact of LMI: LMI has Important Impact on Career Paths of Canadians. Our final analysis on the persistent challenges Canadians face in accessing LMI will be released shortly.
