I, Human: The digital and soft skills driving Canada’s labour market – Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship
The rate at which new technologies emerge and shape the employment landscape appears to be accelerating. New job titles such as AI Ethicist, Machine Learning Consultant, and Social Media Ninja pop up seemingly every day. Many of these jobs straddle skills from different domains, which can make it difficult for workers to keep up with employer demands in the labour market.
According to much of the current research from academia, government, and the private sector, this changing landscape of skills and work is at least in part driven by technological and societal factors, such as automation and population aging. Collectively, these studies suggest that workers are often expected to possess a suite of skills from many domains simultaneously, including digital literacy, interpersonal relations, and communications, as well as judgment, problem-solving, and creativity.
However, these skill sets are often described in general terms and little is known about the current—let alone the future—landscape of employer demand for specific skills or combinations of skills. This lack of visibility can inhibit policymakers and educators from effectively responding to changing skills demands or workers from developing the skills that will help them succeed in the job market.
Using data scraped from job postings collected by Burning Glass Technologies from January 2012 to December 2018, this report uncovers the specific digital (skills that involve the use of and/or production of digital technologies) and non-digital (including soft) skills that employers in Canada are seeking. Our aim is to help inform the efforts of policymakers, educators and training organizations, as well as the decisions of students and job seekers looking to understand which skill combinations are likely to serve them best in the job market.