ICTC Launches Labour Market Information Program

The Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) today announces that it has begun a three-year project in partnership with the industry and associations, academic institutions, and policy makers to ensure the availability of timely, relevant and specific labour market information and forecasts for the digital economy. This initiative will assist Canadians to find and prepare for skilled jobs in the ICT sector. Nearly 60,000 jobs will be created in the next several years in emerging fields such as mobile, apps, cloud, and automation and robotics, adding to the 106,000 jobs that were expected to have been created between 2011 and 2016 in traditional ICT sectors. ICTC’s new web tool will provide accurate forecasts and make finding those jobs – and preparing for them with training – accessible to everyone.

Employer demand for workers in the ICT sector outweighs the supply of workers with the right skills. Industry is challenged to understand precisely where the talent clusters are across the country, and educational institutions are challenged to design programs that meet the labour and skills market needs of the future. The initiative will meet policy-makers’ requirement for granular data in order to design and implement policies to attract investment..

ICTC’s new data will provide:

• Canadians with insight into the availability of jobs in their province and municipality, which sectors are hiring and how many, salary expectation, and where to go to get the training required to acquire the right skills, helping them make good decisions about their investments in training and education;
• Industry will be able to better pinpoint the geography of talent supplies;
• Educational institutions will have a better understanding of the skills requirements across the country to design relevant and timely training programs
• Policy-makers will be able to craft policies that help to attract domestic and foreign investment to their jurisdictions.

The web tool is being developed with the support of Employment and Social Development Canada’s long-term financial support through its Labour Market Information program.

The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Economic and Social Development, today commented on this initiative saying: “Our Government’s top priority is creating jobs, economic growth and long-term prosperity. That is why our Government is committed to addressing the paradox of too many Canadians without jobs in an economy of too many jobs without Canadians. This project will provide better labour market information in the information and communications sector so we can ensure that Canadians have the skills they need for the jobs that are available today and into the future. ”

Once substantially completed, Canadians seeking new or upgraded employment will be able to access an end-to-end tool that describes job trends in ICT at the national, regional, provincial and census metropolitan area levels, connects that information to forecasts and real-time job postings on the Working in Canada portal and elsewhere, and that connects Canadians to self-assessment tool and training programs at universities and public and private career colleges.

This unique tool and dataset will be leveraged by ICTC in all of its research and program offerings, including studies describing the impacts on the Canadian economy of emerging technologies, as well as programs that address under- and unemployment among youth, Aboriginal youth, internationally educated professionals and women.

Private sector, education and policymakers are encouraged to contact ICTC to discuss their data requirements.

This project is funded by the Government of Canada’s Sectoral Initiatives Program.

Source: http://www.ictc-ctic.ca/