Pathways and Job Transitions in Canada – A model

As part of our series on Employability Skills , this primer explains how we determine potential job transitions for Canadian workers considering a career change. We identify potential transitions for Canadian workers seeking new career opportunities that are both viable and desirable. In order to assess potential job transitions, we applied the U.S.-based O*NET occupational framework to Canadian labour data. We also included Canadian job postings data. The result is a comprehensive database covering 450 occupations that lists pairwise matches between an initial occupation and other jobs that are prospective transitions. The database will provide different stakeholders with a unique tool for labour market planning. The job transitions database is expected to be continually improved and refined as more and better data become available.

Highlights

• Employment will look different in the future. Also, the types of education, abilities, skills, and experiences that employers want are changing. It is critical to be able to identify potential job transitions for Canadian workers.
• Job transitions data will provide different stakeholders with a unique tool for labour market planning. The job transition mapping allows:
– individuals to determine possible career paths;
– policy-makers and educators to decide where to focus training, retraining, and upskilling of programs or policies;
– employers to identify pools of talent in other occupations that they can tap into to fill labour shortages.
• We identify potential transitions for Canadian workers seeking new career opportunities that are both viable and desirable.
– A viable job is one that has similar skills, abilities, knowledge, experiences, and educational credentials.
– A desirable job is one that pays similar or higher wages, and has growing employment prospects.
• To assess potential job transitions, we applied the U.S.-based O*NET occupational framework to Canadian labour data. We also included Canadian job postings data.
– The resulting database used in our analysis has over 13 billion data points.
– We were able to assess the transition potential for 450 occupations into each of the other occupations.

Applying the U.S. O*NET system in a Canadian context

Consistently measuring skills is a challenging task that researchers have wrestled with for several decades. Early work on skills often conflated them with educational attainment, although there is consensus that the two are distinct ideas.

In subsequent years, various skills frameworks have been developed. An example would be the Skills and Competencies Taxonomy developed by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC). But a comprehensive framework for skills has not been applied to the Canadian labour data.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has been at the forefront of measuring skills with the development of its O*NET classification system. The O*NET database contains a rich set of variables that describe work and worker characteristics for nearly 1,000 occupations. These occupations are then described by a wide array of features, including:

• skills
• knowledge
• abilities
• work activities
• education, training, and experience