Access to reliable and relevant labour market information (LMI) is essential to supporting education, employment, training and career choices. Yet, even in this age of interconnectedness and new, innovative platforms for sharing data, LMIC’s public opinion research has found that a significant number of Canadians are not finding the information they need and want (see figure).
Beginning in August 2018, we asked a wide variety of Canadians a series of questions about their LMI needs. 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).
Among all five user groups, a large share reported difficulty in finding LMI. Those who indicated they were unemployed had the most difficulty, with 56% reporting that finding LMI is difficult. Among recent graduates and persons with disabilities, slightly more than half said it was difficult to find LMI. Recent immigrants and employed people reported the least difficulty at 47% and 46%, respectively.
Large Number of Respondents Say Finding LMI is Difficult
Note: "Difficult" includes all responses indicating that finding job market information is "somewhat difficult" or "very difficult." "Not at all difficult" or "not very difficult" responses are counted as "easy" on LMIC’s dashboard of results.
The difficulty in finding LMI is likely related to a number of socio-demographic and other factors, such as the types of information each group is looking for and the challenges they face. To that end, LMIC is conducting deeper analyses into these and other survey results to determine if there are structural or demographic factors behind the challenges faced by respondents. The next issues of LMI Insights in this series will provide details on whether these users were able to understand the LMI they found and whether it had an impact, and it will report on each group’s top four LMI needs and challenges. Stay tuned!
Check out the survey dashboard to visualize the results in an interactive way. Additional results will be made available as analyses are completed.
