Level of access and employment type

We asked Canadians who are currently or were recently employed to identify which job category best describes their most current or recent employment. The results were tabulated along six major job types: labourer; semi-skilled; skilled trades person; sales, service, and clerical; professional; and management and administrative. For both 1999 and 2000, we looked at the level of access to the Internet, access to the Internet from home and the main barriers to home access among the six distinct employment types (Table 4.2).

The level of overall Internet access by employment types reveals a deep divide between profession, managerial and administrative on one side (“white collar” workers), and labourers and trade people on the other (“blue collar” workers). Respondents who work in sales, services or clerical types of employment figure close to the mean on the level of overall access to the Internet. Home access, on the other hand, is more highly concentrated among the previously identified white collar workers, with all other employment types falling well below the home access rates among professional, management and administrative workers.