The bottom chart on page 10 deals with seasonal workers. The idea here is that one of the ways to deal with labour shortages is for Canadians to work more hours. Over the course of the year, there are significant periods where some seasonal workers are not working.
If you look at the chart, the first set of bars shows all temporary workers. Temporary workers are people who believe their jobs are not going to continue. There's about 13% of all employees who reported in 2005 as being temporary workers. If you look at the other three bars, there's a breakdown of the components that make up the total of temporary workers.
Term or contract employees, and that includes employees who work through a temporary help agency, constituted the lion's share of temporary employment in 2005, representing 6.4% of all employees. The other important thing is that temporary work has actually grown by 40% from 1997 to 2005.
A comment on seasonal employment is that it's about 3% of all workers, but it's not the same across the country. It's very prevalent in Newfoundland and Labrador and P.E.I., where one in ten workers is a seasonal employee. It's also high in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
The top chart on page 11 shows another population. I'm referring to the aboriginal population, who are underrepresented in the labour market. The aboriginal population is young. The median age of aboriginal people in Canada is projected to increase from about 25 in 2000 to 28 in 2017. We expect to see significant numbers of young aboriginal adults in the 20 to 29 age group entering the labour market. The size of this group is expected to increase by over 40% by 2017. You can expect a phenomenal increase in the proportion of aboriginals in the young adult population in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. It may almost double in Saskatchewan, and Manitoba will rise as well.
The bottom chart on page 11 concerns aboriginal people living off reserve in western Canada. It shows that they are less likely to be active in the economy than non-aboriginal people. Education has a huge impact on that. In fact, the participation rate among aboriginal post-secondary completers was 88%. That's a shade above the rate for non-aboriginal post-secondary completers.
The top of page 12 shows labour market conditions for all aboriginal people. In both Alberta and British Columbia, aboriginal people who have completed post-secondary education have higher participation rates than the non-aboriginal population with post-secondary education. Again, that is an indication that education matters.
The bottom of the slide on page 12 deals with immigration and population growth generally.
For many years, natural growth was the main engine of Canadian demographic growth. Since the early 1990s, this is no longer the case. Immigration is now more significant. The migratory contribution to total population growth is continuing to increase, and since 2001, two-thirds of it can be attributed to migratory growth — in other words, immigrants coming to Canada.
With the aging population and low birth rate, the number of deaths is likely to increase, while the number of births is likely to remain more or less the same. Natural growth will thus become negative by the end of 2020. Population growth will therefore be possible only through an increase in immigration.
The slide at the top of page 13 deals with labour market conditions for recent immigrants. While immigrants are an increasingly important source of population and labour force growth, their integration into the Canadian economy seems to have worsened. Despite the economic boom in the late 1990s, the 2001 census shows that the employment rate of immigrants of core working age, in the 25 to 54 age group, who had arrived in Canada during the five previous years.... The point there is that for recent immigrants, the employment rate is lagging well behind that of the native-born Canadian population of the same age. It's 65% for recent immigrants, compared to 81% for those born in Canada.
The last slide at the bottom of page 13 concerns persons with disabilities and the potential for increasing the supply of labour by increasing their participation. About 10% of working-age Canadians, approximately two million people, live with some form of disability. About 45% of persons with disabilities are in the labour force compared to about 80% of the non-disabled population.
Increasing access to the labour market for persons with disabilities provides benefits to Canadian society as a whole. About 40% of persons with disabilities not in the labour force cannot work because of their disabilities, but that leaves a potential labour pool of over 600,000 persons. Enabling these people to work requires workplace and job accommodation. The most common needs identified have been job redesign, modified hours, and physical changes to the workplace.
That's it.