Why we’re doing this project
With the broad-scale shift to remote work, changing global powers, and the growing climate emergency, Canada’s economy is evolving rapidly. COVID-19 has, in many ways, disrupted or accelerated the pace of change. Inevitably, these technological, social, environmental, and political shifts will alter the nature of work — introducing new threats and uncertainties, as well as new opportunities.
BII+E’s Employment in 2030 initiative focused on responding to these changes to create a holistic, detailed, and actionable forecast of in-demand skills. The Forecast of Canadian Occupational Growth (FCOG) was released earlier this year along with a web app and the data and modelling code that we used to build it. The forecast identified a number of foundational skills and abilities that are projected to enable workers to remain resilient to labour market change over the next decade. These include: fluency of ideas, memorization, instructing, persuasion, and service orientation.
The aim of Employment in 2030: Action Labs is to build on the FCOG by supporting the design of policies and programs that help workers gain the skills and abilities they need to be resilient in the next decade. With this project, we plan to:
- explore how COVID-19 might impact the trends, foundational skills, and abilities that were identified in the Forecast of Canadian Occupational Growth (FCOG)
- apply the Forecast of Canadian Occupational Growth (FCOG) to policy and program design
- co-create regionally relevant interventions and / or solutions to help more organizations and people build the skills that will be critical for the future of work
- gather feedback from workshop participants to inform potential future iterations of the FCOG
This project is part of the portfolio of work by the Future Skills Centre, which is funded by the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Program in partnership of Ryerson University, the Conference Board of Canada, and Blueprint.
