Applied Research Bulletin - Volume 4, Number 2 (Summer-Fall 1998) - September 1998

Job Futures-Matching Career Aspirations with Needs of the Labour Market

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Looking for a job? Deciding what to study at school?

Up-to-date information about current and future conditions in the labour market is the key to making informed educational and career choices. Canadians can find a wealth of useful information in Job Futures, a career counselling product of the Canadian Occupational Projection System of the Applied Research Branch of Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC). In fact, many Canadians are already relying on Job Futures for career information. In the one-month period after its release in April 1998, the Job Futures website was visited approximately 150,000 times per week.

On average, newcomers and re-entrants to today's job market will discover in Job Futures that job opportunities, relative to the first half of the 1990s, will be improving as we move towards the year 2001. Employment has increased substantially since early 1997 and is expected to remain robust this year and next. Take a closer look, however, and you'll find that labour market conditions vary substantially across occupations. Computer programmers and firefighters, for example, face good work prospects-they're in occupations where workers are in relatively short supply. Biologists and plumbers, on the other hand, may find it tougher to locate work-these occupations are experiencing a relative surplus of workers. These are the details students and other job seekers need to know in order to make a successful transition into the labour market.

Job Futures contains two main components:

• statistical profiles of some 200 occupations and of recent graduates from 155 major fields of study by level of education, and
• an assessment of current and future labour market prospects for new entrants to the labour market.

The occupational information and assessment of current and future labour market prospects are arrived at through an analysis of data by a team of HRDC specialists as well as information provided by professional associations, trade associations and industrial organizations in the private sector. A detailed methodology of the derivation of these ratings will be presented in a forthcoming Applied Research Branch publication, Job Futures (1997-98): Data Dictionary and Interpretative Guide for Analysts.

Here is a quick overview of the type of information a Canadian searching for a job or choosing a course of study will find on the Job Futures website or CD-ROM.

Current Labour Market Conditions

Looking across all occupations, current labour market conditions are considered to be fair. This rating is consistent for all skill levels (education and training groupings) except management, where conditions are good, and occupations at lower levels of education and training, where the situation is poor. Grouped by broad industry type, workers of all occupations are facing fair labour market conditions except in health (rated good) and art, culture, recreation, sport, trades, transport and equipment operators (all rated poor).

Ratings vary within broad skill groupings. For example, at the professional skill level (university education), the overall skill rating is fair while conditions are considered good for some of these occupations (like human resource professionals, systems analysts, doctors, dentists, electrical and electronic engineers and lawyers) and poor for others (such as life science professionals, including biologists, and creative and performing artists). In sales and service occupations, overall conditions are also considered fair. However, within this skill type conditions are good for police and firefighters and poor for chefs and cooks, child-care and home support workers, and cleaners.

In general terms, the current labour market conditions for recent graduates from the formal school system are fair. This rating is consistent across all types of courses except trade-vocational where the rating is poor, primarily the result of the poor conditions faced by graduates from secretarial programs (16 percent of all 1996 trade/vocational graduates). Looking at fields of study, overall conditions are fair although the ratings vary from poor for arts graduates to good for physical science graduates. This is due largely to the positive conditions being faced by computer science graduates.

Future Labour Market Conditions—Occupations

It is anticipated that over the 1996-2001 projection period, the number of new job openings will exceed the number of new job seekers (a movement towards excess demand) for management occupations and occupations requiring postsecondary education. Examples of occupations in these two categories include financial managers, human resource managers, chemists/chemical technologists, geologists/geological technologists, machinists and electrical trades and telecommunications workers. The reverse, generally, will hold true for occupations requiring high school completion or less. Future labour market conditions are expected to worsen for such occupations as mail and message distributors; cashiers; attendants in travel, accommodation and recreation; and machine operators and related workers in metal and mineral products processing.

Source:

Human Resources Development Canada. Job Futures, 1998

Text version

Emerging shortages or surpluses will not necessarily translate into unfilled vacancies or unemployment. Adjustments in wages and salaries, training, inter-occupational mobility and changes in production plans will all contribute to resolving these expected imbalances.

Looking at skill types, labour market conditions are expected to remain unchanged in all business, finance and administration occupations except for mail and message distribution where conditions will deteriorate from fair to poor. Conditions in natural and applied sciences are expected to improve from fair to good on the strength of computer scientists, engineers and professional and technical occupations in the physical sciences. No occupation in the natural and applied sciences grouping is expected to face worse conditions in 2001 than they faced in 1996.

Source:

Human Resources Development Canada. Job Futures, 1998

Text version

Although the number of new job seekers is expected to exceed the number of new job openings in the health sector, the only occupation group in this sector that is expected to experience worse conditions in 2001 than in 1996 is therapy and assessment professionals. In social sciences, education, government services and religion, the rating deteriorates from fair to poor for psychologists, social workers, counsellors and ministers of religion.

The largest movement toward a labour surplus occurs in the art, culture, recreation and sport sectors where conditions worsen from fair to poor for announcers and other performers, athletes, coaches, referees and related occupations. Over the projection period, conditions in the sales and service sector are expected to remain fair although there will be a deterioration from fair to poor for cashiers and attendants in travel, accommodation and recreation. No occupation in the sales and service group is expected to be in a better labour market situation in 2001 than it is currently.

In the trades and transport sectors, conditions will improve for machinists, electrical trades and telecommunications workers. In the primary sector, labour market conditions are expected to improve for supervisors in logging and forestry, logging machine operators, and mining occupations, and remain poor or worsen for occupations related to agriculture and fishing. Over the projection period, conditions in the processing, manufacturing and utilities sector are expected to improve for central control and process operators and worsen for machine operators in the metal and mineral products industry.

Prospects for Selected Occupations For the Year 2001
Good Work Prospects	Poor Work Prospects
Aircraft mechanics and inspectors	Agriculture and horticulture workers
Chemical, geological and geophysics technologists and technicians	Bricklayers and drywall installers
Engineers	Chefs and cooks
Industrial electricians	Cleaners
Machine operators - chemical, plastic, rubber, pulp and paper	Creative designers and craftspersons
Mathematicians, systems analysts and computer programmers	Fishing - deckhands and trappers, fishing vessel masters and skippers
Mechanical, electrical and electronic assemblers	Masonry and plastering trades
Pharmacists, dietitians and nutritionists	Plumbers, pipefitters and gas fitters
Physicians, dentists and veterinarians	Secretaries - general, legal and medical
Tool and die makers	Trades helpers and labourers

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Future Labour Market Conditions—Fields of Study

Job Futures also estimates the future labour market situation of graduates by program of study. Generally, conditions are expected to remain fair for recent graduates although these results vary across individual fields of study. Improvement, from poor to fair, is expected for:

• trade-vocational arts graduates, primarily due to such personal arts fields as hairstyling and cosmetology;
• community college graduates in business, largely the result of an improved outlook for retail sales, marketing and financial management graduates; and
• community college primary technologies graduates, due to an improved outlook for geology and prospecting; and drilling, extracting, mining, petroleum, environment, conservation and forestry technology graduates.

Conditions will improve from fair to good for master's, undergraduate and community college graduates in engineering or engineering technologies. Alternatively, the situation is expected to deteriorate from good to fair for master's graduates in social science (the result of a worsening situation for psychology and social work graduates) and from fair to poor for undergraduate university applied arts graduates. Conditions are expected to remain good for university graduates in business and physical science; fair for undergraduate university graduates in education, humanities, life sciences and health; and fair for trade-vocational graduates in engineering technologies. The situation will remain poor for:

• community college graduates in arts, especially those in commercial and promotional arts, and creative and design arts;
• trade-vocational graduates in business, mainly due to the poor outlook for graduates from the secretarial programs; and
• primary technology graduates, largely the result of the weak outlook for agricultural and food processing technology graduates.

Prospects for Selected Fields of Study For the Year 2001
Good Work Prospects	Poor Work Prospects
Auto mechanic, auto body (Trade-vocational)	Agriculture (All levels)
Business (Masters)	Arts (All levels)
Computer science (All levels)	Biology (Undergraduate)
Dental hygiene (Trade-vocational)	Cooking (Trade-vocational)
Dentistry (Undergraduate)	Psychology (Undergraduate)
Engineering, engineering technologies (All levels)	Religion and theological studies (University)
Law (Undergraduate)	Secretarial (All levels)
Medicine (Undergraduate)	Service industry technologies (Community college)
Machinist (Trade-vocational)	Social work (University)
Veterinary science, medicine (Undergraduate)	Welding (Trade-vocational)

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