Top Challenges in Finding LMI
Top Four Most Cited LMI Needs by Respondent Group (Percentage)
Note: Respondents were asked to select from a set of nine challenges they might have faced when trying to find job market information. The percentages reflect the share of respondents in each group selecting that answer. The colour of the boxes indicates the frequency with which these respondents selected the challenge listed (darker = most common; lightest = fourth most common).
Building a career is an ongoing process. During that process, we continuously navigate options and make choices, ideally while using relevant labour market information (LMI) that can answer our questions and address our concerns. Therefore, we wanted to know about the persistent challenges Canadians face when they go looking for information to support their careerrelated decisions.
Beginning in August 2018, we asked a wide variety of Canadians a series of questions about their LMI needs, including the challenges they face in finding LMI. The first set of results focuses on five groups: employed people, unemployed people, people with disabilities, recent immigrants, and recent university and college graduates. (More detail about how we conducted these surveys can be found here).
Within the five groups surveyed, two types of challenges were identified most frequently: (i) job market information lacks insights about the future (top challenge identified by recent graduates and recent immigrants); and, (ii) the information is not relevant to the individual (top challenge identified by both employed and unemployed people and by persons with disabilities).
The demand for forward-looking LMI indicates there is an appetite for insights into the future of work, a topic that LMIC is working on with our partners and stakeholders. The challenge of finding LMI that is relevant to Canadians is consistent with our efforts to tailor LMI in a way that addresses the diversity of user needs (see the LMIC Operational Plan), an endeavour that has been noted by previous LMI assessments. But is that enough? To make these personal, lifelong decisions, Canadians need more than facts: they need LMI that tells a story they can relate to and be guided by.
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, and Issue No. 8 on the LMI MostWanted by Canadians: Wages and Skills.
