At the same time there have been losses in literacy proficiency among and within different groups. As individuals age, average prose literacy tends to slightly decline as well. As a group, holders of a university degree had lower average prose literacy scores in 2003 than in 1994, likely related to a difference in scores for immigrant and non-immigrant populations. About two percent of the Canadianborn who had completed university education have prose literacy scores at Level 1 compared to 18 percent of recent immigrants and 14 percent of established immigrants who had completed university.

While it is true that recent immigrants tend to be better educated than in the past, more come from countries where English or French are not mainstream languages. This explains, at least in part, why recent immigrants between the ages of 16 and 65 perform significantly below the Canadian-born population on the literacy tests. Much more analytical work will be required to fully explore the factors around the lack of significant change in the overall literacy performance of Canadian adults.

The results from the 2003 IALSS make it possible to take stock of the overall performance of Canadians and to determine if performance differs by jurisdiction, and within populations of special interest to Canadians. What is shown is that proficiency is not evenly distributed within Canada.

The average literacy, numeracy and problem solving scores of adults in the Yukon, Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia are significantly higher than the national average. Scores in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nunavut are lower than the Canadian average in each of the four domains.

Nova Scotia, the Northwest Territories, Manitoba, Ontario and Prince Edward Island have average scores that are not statistically different than the Canadian averages. In Quebec, the average scores for the two literacy domains are below the national averages while for the numeracy and problem solving domains there is no difference.

Most seniors have relatively low literacy when compared to other age groups: in every province and territory, at least two-thirds of seniors are at literacy Levels 1 and 2. Canadians with university degrees have higher average prose literacy scores compared to those with a high school diploma. In most jurisdictions, men outperform women in numeracy.

Prose literacy performance differs significantly by language in New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba where a higher proportion of Francophones than Anglophones score below Level 3. The Aboriginal populations age 16 and over surveyed in urban Manitoba, urban Saskatchewan and in each of the territories have lower prose literacy proficiency than non-Aboriginal populations, reflecting in some ways the effect of different levels of formal education and a mother tongue other than English or French. Compared to the Canadian-born population, a higher percentage of recent and established immigrants between the ages of 16 and 65 score below prose literacy Level 3.

Unequal distributions of proficiencies may well lead to inequalities in economic and social outcomes, which in turn may make the maintenance and acquisition of new competencies more difficult. The 2003 IALSS results clearly indicate that literacy is associated with employability, the types of jobs occupied by workers, and earnings. Those with higher proficiencies have a higher employment rate and higher earnings and those who work in more knowledge-intensive jobs have higher proficiencies.