Good afternoon.
Founded in 1845, the board is the chamber of commerce of Canada's largest urban centre, connecting more than 12,000 members and 250,000 business professionals across the region. The board plays a vital role in elevating the quality of life and global competitiveness of the Toronto region.
To this end, the board is grateful for this opportunity to provide the committee with its evidence-based advice on maximizing the number and types of jobs for Canadians.
The Toronto region continues to be one of the world's most prosperous city regions. It annually generates nearly 20% of Canada's GDP, and welcomes 120,000 new residents and workers each year. However, Canada's most prosperous city region has a problem. It has stubbornly high rates of youth and newcomer unemployment and underemployment. Region-wide youth unemployment stands at above 18%. This is far above the national average and is the highest it has been in a decade.
It's highly regrettable that our well-educated local talent pool is not being fully leveraged. Of our residents between the ages 25 and 64 years, 55% have post-secondary qualifications, well ahead of other North American regions.
Let's talk about solutions. One way of achieving greater labour market opportunities for youth and newcomers is through access to superior local labour market information, which allows students, educators, businesses, and policy-makers to make smarter decisions. To address our pressing local needs, the board commissioned a region-specific analysis of labour market needs by occupation and industry. This analysis projects the jobs that will be in greatest demand over the next five years across the Toronto region.
Across the country, there is a lack of locally relevant data like this. The board's data is now being used by the region's five colleges, NGOs, such as CivicAction, and the City of Toronto to establish job pathways tailored for local business clusters.
At an industry level, our projections suggest that the largest number of new jobs will be in professional, scientific, and technical services, followed by health and social services. In contrast, manufacturing, information, and cultural sectors are expected to shed jobs over the same period. At an occupational level, the greatest demand will be seen for retail persons, followed by financial auditors and accountants.
Overall we project that there will be more than half a million job openings across the region over the next five years. Half of these positions will be as a result of retirements alone. The important question to consider is whether local residents who are struggling will benefit, or will businesses have to poach workers from other areas of the country or even move these jobs abroad?
How then do we ensure that local residents who are unemployed or underemployed will benefit from these vacancies? We must scale up what is already taking place. We should scale up industry and academic co-ops and partnerships, such as the Downsview aerospace hub. We have to scale up intelligent land planning like Regent Park's revitalization, and we have to scale up the use of community benefit agreements attached to major infrastructure projects like the Eglinton Crosstown project.
Beyond this, there are two other things that can be done.
First, government can be strategic with its infrastructure investments. Bar none, investing in transportation infrastructure generates the greatest economic impact. Transportation construction not only creates jobs, but boosts productivity, as well, by reducing traffic gridlock. In the Toronto region alone, inadequate transportation infrastructure is costing our region up to $11 billion a year in lost productivity.
Second, the government can support productivity growth within the existing business clusters through trade. Trade not only opens market opportunities for businesses, but forces them to grow and to compete.