Evidence of meeting #147 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was years.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
Thank you very much. We're going to reconvene our meeting.
I thank officials from StatsCan and ESDC who are joining us today. I expect that you may be our last witnesses on this study, but you never know the will of the committee and what they would like to have. It's been a lengthy study.
We'll begin with StatsCan to give us the overview around labour market issues, and then we'll go to ESDC for more of a narrower cast.
Josée Bégin Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak today about some key observations on the labour market in Canada.
I would like to use my time to focus largely on issues of labour supply, with a focus on population aging, regional differences and immigration.
Labour supply is influenced by a number of factors, including population aging, immigration, internal migration and trends in the proportion of people in each age group who are either working or looking for work. Since 2008, as the large baby boom cohort has started to leave the labour market, we have seen a gradual but steady decline in the labour force participation rate. In other words, the proportion of the population aged 15 and over, who are either working or looking for work, has been decreasing. In 2008, the participation rate was 68% and by 2018 it had fallen to 65%.
When we project the labour force participation rate in 2036, using a range of assumptions about future immigration levels, fertility rates and age-specific participation rates, we arrive at a number of findings that are relevant to the work of this committee.
First, we find that the number of people working or looking for work, as a proportion of the adult population, will decline, regardless of the assumptions used. In 2017, there were four people in the labour force for each person aged 65-plus not in the labour force. By 2036, we project this ratio to decrease to less than 3:1 at the Canada level and less than 2:1 in some regions, such as in the metropolitan regions of Sudbury and Thunder Bay.
Second, we project that the contribution of immigrants to the labour force will continue to increase. In 2016, one in four members of the labour force was born outside Canada. By 2036, this figure is likely to be one in three.
Third, our projections indicate significant regional differences in the ways that aging, immigration and internal migration will shape Canada's population and economy. For example, metropolitan regions are expected to continue to experience positive growth in the size of their labour force. This is partly as a result of the increased contribution of immigrants. These regions also benefit, in many cases, from internal migration, as young adults are attracted by strong labour markets. In contrast, by 2036, all non-metropolitan regions are projected to experience flat or negative growth in labour force participation.
When we consider how we can measure and evaluate the implications of these long-term projections, three sets of questions come to mind.
First, we must monitor the employment and labour force participation of immigrants. We have a broad range of surveys and data sources at our disposal, including the census and the labour force survey. We are able, for example, to measure various dimensions of the integration of immigrants into the labour market and examine the contribution of immigrants to employment growth.
Second, using our data on job vacancies, we are able to speak to regional variations in the balance between labour supply and demand and their implications for immigration. We are actively engaged with a number of partners, including ESDC, to conduct in-depth analyses of skills mismatches at the regional level.
Third, we are very conscious of the need to shed light not just on the quantity and location of the employment of Canadians, including immigrants, but on the quality and security of that employment.
Since 2008, looking at men aged 25 to 54, the gap between the participation rate of recent immigrants and their Canadian-born counterparts has narrowed. The situation is less clear among immigrant women, where the participation gap has remained constant or closed only slightly, depending on the period of immigration examined.
In recent years, annual employment growth has been driven by increases among landed immigrants. In 2018, employment held steady among those born in Canada while among immigrants, employment grew by 200,000. A substantial portion of this increase was among those who landed in the last five years.
To better understand the important role that immigrants increasingly play in the Canadian labour market, I would like to highlight a few important observations about recent trends in the balance between labour supply and demand and associated questions about skills mismatches.
First, we have seen a clear tightening of labour markets. The unemployment rate has fallen substantially and has reached levels not seen since the 1970s. A corresponding increase has been observed in job vacancies.
Second, we see significant provincial variation in the ratio of unemployment to job vacancies. In British Columbia in the third quarter of 2018, there were just two unemployed people for each job vacancy. Similarly, in Ontario and Quebec there were approximately three. In a number of provinces, by contrast, there were more than five unemployed persons for each vacancy.
We see similar variations at the level of sub-provincial economic regions. That being said, in all regions, even those with the highest rate of unemployment, we see indications that employers are experiencing difficulty finding candidates with the appropriate skills and qualifications to fill some positions.
This is borne out by job vacancy statistics by occupation. In occupations associated with higher levels of education and specialized skills such as health, management and science-related occupations, more than 15% of vacancies take more than 90 days to fill. By contrast, a relatively low proportion of vacancies in sales and service take more than three months to fill.
Finally, I would like to mention quality of employment, which is an area of increasing focus for us at Statistics Canada. As population aging and migration continue to shape the labour force of regions and provinces over the next 20 years, it will be important to consider not just the match between the needs of employers and the skills of workers, but the quality of the resulting employment.
Quality of employment has a number of dimensions including employment security, income security and work-life balance. One dimension of employment security is the extent to which jobs are permanent or temporary. When we look at this through a regional lens, we see that a higher proportion of jobs are temporary in the regions with the highest unemployment rates. This is simply a reminder of the variety of challenges and pressures facing the labour market presently and into the future.
With that, Mr. Chair, I conclude my comments. I hope that this brief overview of some aspects of the Canadian labour market has been helpful to the committee, and I look forward to answering your questions.
February 28th, 2019 / 4:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
Thank you. We might need a weekend with you.
We'll go to Mr. Johnson.
Stephen Johnson Director General, Labour Market Information Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
Thank you.
Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak today about the labour market in Canada.
In my opening remarks, I will speak to the various sources of information available to assess shortages and labour market pressures and some of the analysis and products produced by ESDC, and then offer some brief insights into what we currently understand about labour shortages.
ESDC's mandate includes a focus on a skilled workforce, and an efficient and inclusive labour market in Canada. The department makes significant investments in a robust evidence base to understand the state of the Canadian labour market.
We work closely with Statistics Canada to undertake surveys of individuals and employers, and to collect administrative data from institutions including universities, colleges and polytechnics.
ESDC analyzes data that are used to administer the employment insurance program and the national job bank, for example, to gain insights into the availability of workers and employer demands across the country.
The department also relies on a network of regional economists who work in Service Canada to track and understand local realities from coast to coast to coast. They participate in the development and validation of the labour market information produced by ESDC.
Finally, ESDC provides funding to a range of industry sectors and associations, through the sectoral initiatives program, to produce forecasts and analyses of the specific human resource challenges and issues faced by sectors ranging from construction and mining, to tourism and the aerospace industry.
For example, the work of Buildforce was referenced recently at the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities during its study into challenges faced by the construction industry in the Toronto and Hamilton area.
Defining and measuring labour market shortages is complex. In its simplest definition, a labour shortage exists when there are insufficient qualified workers to meet the labour needs of employers at the prevailing wage rates.
Empirical measurement of shortages is also a challenge. No single indicator or methodology exists. While some focus on supply and demand, specifically unemployment and job vacancies, others can consult a broader suite of indicators. The issue is further complicated by the size and diversity of Canada and its labour markets, as well as the dynamic and often transitory nature of shortages.
In support of its mandate and programs, ESDC produces a suite of internal and published analyses and assessments of labour market conditions, which serve different purposes and audiences. They are built from the core data of Statistics Canada, which we just heard a bit about, and use broadly accepted indicators and econometric models that assess and project labour market needs. These analyses vary along some standard dimensions: the level of geographic detail—national, provincial, local; the level of occupational precision; and the time horizon.
For example, ESDC produces short-term employment outlooks for 500 occupations, in 76 regions of the country—almost 35,000 potential data points. These outlooks, or employment prospects, provide a graphic representation of the relative availability of jobs, using a three-star scale for limited, fair and good prospects. This information is updated annually, and posted on the national Job Bank website.
On the other end of the spectrum, 10-year forecasts are produced by the Canadian occupational projection system, COPS, and are used for longer-term planning. They focus on long-term trends in labour supply and demand at the national level for 292 occupations.
These projections are updated every two years and produce estimates of total employment needs, retirements and attrition, new entrants into the labour force from the school system and immigration. The projections identify occupations expected to face labour-shortage or labour-surplus conditions over the next 10 years.
What do the data tell us? COPS has consistently projected higher-skill occupations requiring university education in health and applied sciences fields to be in shortage nationally. However, national findings often obscure regional and local differences.
At the sub-provincial level, the story can be very different depending on which part of the country you are looking at. For instance, picking up on the earlier presentation by Statistics Canada, recent statistics indicate that Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario are experiencing tightening labour markets.
But when you look below the provincial level, the most recent job vacancy statistics show the top 10 economic regions, with the highest growth rate in job vacancies, included seven in Quebec, one in British Columbia, and two in New Brunswick.
In addition to labour shortages, as mentioned by my colleague, there is also increasing discussion about skills shortages or skills mismatches, sometimes characterized as pockets of high unemployment alongside unmet demand in parts of the country. This is an area of increasing interest, and one in which we have somewhat limited information available. Some research and analysis has been undertaken to look at the skills associated with occupations in shortage, but there is more work to be done in this area.
A rough measure of skills, defined as the education and training required for specific jobs, exists within the occupational classification system. Using this classification in combination with those COPS projections indicates that over a 10-year horizon, labour shortages are more likely in occupations that require a higher level of formal education and training.
In other words, occupations that typically provide on-the-job training are forecast to have no labour shortages over that longer horizon at the national level, while occupations that typically require university or college encompass most forecast shortage areas.
In conclusion, ESDC is continuously working with a range of partners and stakeholders to develop and improve its understanding of labour market dynamics. I hope this brief overview has been helpful, and I would be pleased to answer any of your questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
Thank you.
Because you are both under time, I'm going to use the chair's prerogative to ask you a question, and then we'll turn to Ms. Zahid.
My dilemma is that I believe in evidence-based decision-making. I believe in data. I did a research doctorate. I get that we need to do these things, yet we have witnesses whose lived experience is very different from what we just heard, say, from ESDC. We have lived experiences from the carpenters' union, from the food union we had yesterday, from the Quebec chambers of commerce, from the Toronto Region Board of Trade that are pushing us into quite different stuff. There just seems to be a gap between what they're telling us and what this presentation—I'm not sure if it's what you're telling us or what the presentation seems to imply.
I'm just trying to figure out if you know that those people are saying it's not the university-trained...that we're looking for. It's the carpenters, and the electricians, and the tradespeople and the crane operators. It's the farm workers, it's this, etc., and I'm not getting that in either of the presentations. Our job is to serve them, so I'm trying to figure out if it is news to you that as politicians we're hearing something very different.
Director General, Labour Market Information Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
This is not news to us.
One of the messages I would like to leave for this committee is the notion that we have a range of sources of data, statistics and information insights. Those range from surveys to administrative data to sectors that ESDC funds to produce and to provide us with these results, to the regional economists I mentioned, who are in the field, and who collect and understand daily news about plants opening and shifts shutting down or starting up. There's a full range there.
Part of the challenge, if I may speak to my remarks, that I had in trying to synthesize what we know is that there's so much information. I chose the 10-year longer-term national projections, in part because they were easier and they show trends that also allow for a lot of dynamics in the labour market to play through.
I think what we hear, what you're hearing, what we read about, and what we understand is that with historically low unemployment rates, with tightening labour markets, employers in most parts of the country, in most sectors, are finding it more difficult, more competitive, to find and recruit workers—
Director General, Labour Market Information Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
—and we would not dispute that.
Sometimes perhaps the labour market economists come out to talk about the notion of the shortage and whether it is a sustained structural shortage, or that we also need to look at the supply of labour and its ability to adapt and to adjust through geographic mobility, occupational mobility, training and so on.
Those longer-term trends—and my colleague is more of an expert in this area—have to take into account some of that ability for the labour market to adjust and for supply to respond.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
It's complex. I get it.
As MPs, we get employers in our offices, who are having to do an LMIA and they're going crazy. “Everyone knows I can't find someone, I talked to everybody, yet I'm going through this crazy process and spending money, but it's going to come back.” Is it just keeping the bureaucrats happy that we're doing this? Is it really protecting Canadians who need those jobs?
I don't want to have anecdotes because my office is anecdote and you're evidence.
You might want to respond, then Madam Bégin.
Director General, Labour Market Information Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
The agricultural sector is an interesting one. My colleagues and I have had a couple of meetings in recent weeks with the Agricultural Human Resource Council and others. If you look at those national projections I mentioned, they will show balance over the long term. If you look at some of the 76 economic regions and locations across the country, for general farm labourers and some very specific ones, it's a mixed story. You will see some pockets that show shortage, with indications of strong shortage, while others have balance, so that's where it is a more nuanced story, but it doesn't aggregate up well to a compelling story for that sector right now, through the data that we see.
There is a technical issue around temporary foreign workers that isn't necessarily picked up well in some of our statistics, so we are aware of that and working on that now.
Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
At Statistics Canada, we collect statistics on labour force surveys every month, on employment insurance and employment by industry, and we also have a survey on job vacancies, so what you just said earlier, we have heard it as well.
Our job is to try to better understand how we can integrate those different indicators to help policy-makers and employers to make decisions or even for people to find jobs or to have more information about the labour market.
About a year and a half ago, for example, we had heard from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency about various messages they were hearing in the field about the labour market, which were contrary to what we were publishing.
We've been working closely with them, and maybe digging a little bit deeper into our statistics to try to make links between the various sources, whether it's survey data or administrative sources, to better inform them at that level.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
I'm learning that any national program is not going to be effective because everything needs to be targeted: urban, rural, regional. It's very much about smaller markets, as opposed to anything that's big. It's going to have to be very nimble.
I hope that there's some way that we can get some soft information. It just seems to me that the surveys must be missing something, but maybe not. At least test the surveys against our lived experiences of that. I'm ranting now.
Thank you committee for indulging me. I've only done this twice in three and a half years.
Scarborough Centre, Lib.
Thanks to our witnesses.
My first question is for Ms. Bégin, from Statistics Canada.
I'm looking at the deck you have provided us and you touched briefly on the participation rate and the gap that persists for immigrant women. The gap between immigrant men who have been here for five years and their Canadian-born counterparts has narrowed, but the gap persists for immigrant women.
Have you looked into this or have you collected some data about why this gap persists? Do you have some information in regard to that?
Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
I will let my colleague, Vincent Dale, answer.
Vincent Dale Assistant Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
We have done some research on this question. One part of the explanation is the origin of those women. They tend to come, increasingly, from countries where women are less likely to participate in the labour force. In order to fully understand the recent dynamics in the labour force, we're going to have to follow these women through administrative data. These are survey-based data, with relatively small sample sizes. There is an indication that something has been happening in the past five years, and we're going to have to follow that dynamic through administrative data, over the coming years.
Scarborough Centre, Lib.
Yes, because this shows that even for those who have been here for 10 years or more, there's a gap between them and their counterparts who were born in Canada. Is language a barrier, do you think?
Assistant Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
I have to confess, I'm not an expert in this area, so we would have to put you in contact with some of our colleagues who have much more expertise on those types of questions.
Scarborough Centre, Lib.
Yes, I would like some more information. Being an immigrant woman myself, I would like to see why that is happening. I represent a riding where we have a big component of immigrant women.
Scarborough Centre, Lib.
My next question is for Mr. Johnson. In the data that Statistics Canada has provided, it is mentioned that there will be a decline in people looking for work in the coming 20 years. This decline will vary considerably between the regions, with the greatest decrease in rural areas of northern Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces. Do you think that the rural immigration pilot project announced recently by the Minister of Immigration will help towards this? Do you have any ideas about the program?
Director General, Labour Market Information Directorate, Department of Employment and Social Development
I'm not really familiar with that particular project. My main areas of responsibility are labour market information, the national Job Bank and ESDC. I don't know much about that design of the pilot.
Scarborough Centre, Lib.
My question is for Statistics Canada. We know that the Canadian fertility rate is declining, and that we are an aging country, according to your data. Women are having children at older ages. The average age of mothers at childbirth was 30.8 years in 2016, and the average age for the first birth has risen to 29.2 years. They are having fewer children, as of 2016. The fertility rate has dropped to 1.54 children per woman. Given these demographic trends, can we meet current and projected future labour demands through our Canadian-born population alone?
