It's a little bit different with regard to the kinds of occupations and the kinds of skills of university graduates. I mean, look at the job changes that have taken place in our economy. In the economic downturn, there were about 450,000 jobs lost for those who do not have any post-secondary education. There were about 78,000 increased jobs for those with college. There were about 6,000 fewer jobs for people with trades, and there were about 300,000 more jobs for university graduates. They were all in the kind of occupational profile that I pointed to before.
Part of what a university education does is it provides the learner with lifelong learning skills to be adaptable themselves. Many of them have those skills, and that's why we see people in computer programming jobs who have English degrees. That's why we see students adapt and change. It's why we see engineers who are doing things far outside the field of engineering.
An awful lot of adapting and change takes place, and it's not just for university graduates. In the picture that one can draw with some of these data, it is really important to understand the kind of shifting going on in the labour market.
I agree with my colleague that lifelong learning is really important. No country has it right yet, especially for the 45-year-old who has changed jobs and now has that additional expense to go through and a very short career thereafter to benefit from that expense.
So it's a real challenge in every economy. We've been talking about it for the 35 years or so that I've been involved in this field. I've seen France and other countries talk about éducation à vie and not really be successful at finding new ways. As I think the demographic data that I had up earlier showed, we have to find ways of dealing with that. We cannot, as Jim pointed out, meet future labour market needs if we only rely on the growth in education of the youth cohorts. We have a big challenge there, and we need to make sure that we're using every opportunity to exploit the kinds of educational backgrounds they've had in the past.