Participation in job-related training by level of education and employer support, 1997 and 2002
Source: Statistics Canada, 2003 Adult Education and Training Survey.
This section has shown that less-educated individuals are likely to experience relatively poor labour market outcomes over the entire course of their career, in the form of lower wages, a higher likelihood of unemployment, and lower-status jobs. Differences in labour market outcomes based on education take effect early in a worker’s career, and persist throughout their careers. In fact, the least-educated will likely fall farther behind their more-educated counterparts over the course of their careers, as ‘learning begets learning’ – those with high initial levels of education are more likely to take advantage of future educational and training opportunities, and reap the rewards in the form of better, higher-paying jobs. The difference in labour market outcomes between the least-educated and their more educated counterparts has become larger in the past 20 years.