World Education Services (WES) is excited to partner with the Labour Market Information Council (LMIC) to add migration as a new theme to the Future of Work Annotated Bibliography, LMIC’s data source on labour market megatrends. This source makes labour market information accessible and aids strategic decision-making, enabling employers and policy makers to address current and future needs.
In Canada, migration is critical to the future of work. According to a 2018 study by the Conference Board of Canada, immigration accounts for 71 percent of population growth and as much as 90 percent of labour force growth; by 2034, it is expected to account for 100 percent of both population and labour force growth.
With 1.2 million immigrants projected to arrive over the next three years—60 percent of them highly skilled—according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the Future of Work Annotated Bibliography must be considered an invaluable resource. It provides the data that policy makers and immigrant-serving organizations need to effectually integrate newcomers into the workforce, help inform planning, and drive future growth.
The Future of Work Annotated Bibliography leverages both LMIC’s leadership in the field of labour market information—LMIC works to improve the timeliness, reliability, and accessibility of that information—and WES’ expertise in helping people learn, work, and thrive in new places.
Regularly updated with new entries and summaries, the Future of Work Annotated Bibliography includes key takeaways from industry reports. Having access to this timely information supports the decision-making of employers, workers, job seekers, and others. LMIC and WES assess the relevance, accuracy, and quality of each report in the new migration section so that all stakeholders can benefit.
A Rapidly Changing Work Environment
Newcomers to Canada soon discover that the country’s work environment is dynamic. Accelerating the speed at which organizations and governments must address the evolving needs of workers and constituents is the COVID-19 pandemic. The “grand experiment,” as the pandemic has been called—revealing which companies are agile in the face of unforeseen disruptions, and which are not—has forced workers to grapple with these changes and confronted employers, educators, and policy makers with pressing questions, including how to adequately prepare for the future, that the Future of Work Annotated Bibliography can help them address.
The future of work is now. According to the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), nearly half of all jobs will be disrupted by technology and automation and require a new set of skills by 2030. Workers, employers, educators, and policy makers need data to inform their planning and ensure adequate retraining and upskilling of the labour force to meet future needs.
Technology is not the only disruption to the world of work. Over the next seven to eight years, the number of retirements is expected to reach 285,000 annually; currently, 5,000 baby boomers retire every week. This “retirement explosion” will undoubtedly strain government budgets and social safety nets like health care and pensions, and is expected to have significant implications for economic growth. The reports captured in the Future of Work Annotated Bibliography provide insights into these anticipated disruptions to the labour market and the skills economy, along with projections about emerging sectors and technologies.
In many ways, the pandemic has brought the future of work into sharper focus, and perhaps made the LMIC resource even more valuable. The Future of Work Annotated Bibliography is used to inform organizational, policy, and programmatic decisions, determinations that are critically important now as policy makers draft recovery plans and prepare to “build back better” post-COVID—and look ahead to the future of work.
Chiedza Pasipanodya is program manager, knowledge management, with WES Global Talent Bridge in Canada.
