Employment Shifts and Skills Gaps

Industries that are experiencing employment growth – such as trade, personal services and financial services – are high literacy areas. The industries that have experienced growth are the ones whose employees have relatively strong skills; those that are declining – agriculture and manufacturing – are characterized by lower skills. It is widely reported that the occupations of the future will be those requiring well developed essential skills. Changes in the distribution of occupations reflect the transformation that is occurring as Canada moves from an industrial to an information economy. One of the best prescriptions to exploit the new economic environment is to strengthen the capacity of Canadians to adjust to change, improve their productivity and capitalize on innovation. But this capacity depends first and foremost on the skills of the population. Literacy will be a powerful determinant of Canada’s innovative and adaptive capacity, and hence of the country’s future economic prosperity.

What is important to recognize and address is that there are also gaps between the skills jobs require and the skills workers possesses. In his analysis of these basic skills gaps, University of Alberta sociologist Harvey Krahn suggests that:

• the “fit” between skill levels and job requirements is 33% in Canada. What he found was that 22% of workers have skill levels that are too low given the requirements of their jobs and 45% of workers have skill levels beyond what their jobs require.
• given the changing demands of the workplace and without strategic intervention, the gap between the essential skills required by a job and the skills workers posses is likely to increase over time.

Individuals who must be retrained for other jobs may lack the requisite basic skills to succeed; unless colleges and institutes develop the essential skills of their learners, retraining may not be effective. Admittedly, “basic” is determined somewhat by context. For example, having the math skills to do an area calculation may be basic to a carpenter, but not basic to a systems analyst.

What are the Myths We Shouldn’t Believe About Essential Skills?

The IALS is revolutionary because it demonstrates, again through the power of international comparisons, that literacy is ‘policy amenable.’ IALS offers a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the concrete effects of specific types of policy in other nations as well as in Canada. By comparing and contrasting literacy policies in these countries, Canadians can gain a better understanding of how public policy affects the acquisition of literacy skills. IALS is also revolutionary in its scope. This is not a study for statisticians or researchers. Rather, it speaks to every Canadian, not only those who care about this issue, but particularly to those who have ignored literacy in the past. IALS says to macro-economists, to senior policy makers, to politicians, to bureaucrats, to business people, and to the media that literacy matters more to individuals and to countries than anyone ever thought possible, certainly more than people have been willing to recognize until now. IALS is revolutionary because it debunks myths, and challenges conventional views about the importance of adult literacy.