HIGHLIGHTS
This report offers a picture of employer-sponsored skills training in Canada based the limited data currently available. It covers levels, types, and trends in firms’ training investments, discusses which firms provide (and which employees receive) training, and explores the motivations and barriers firms face in providing training as well as where gaps in the ecosystem require attention.
Data on employer-sponsored training in Canada are largely unreliable, out of date, and ill-suited for comparison across time and jurisdictions. Developing even a rough picture of the role of employers in the skills and training ecosystem is an exercise in bricolage and triangulation that requires frequent choices between using more robust but older data or more recent but unreliable data.
Examining the limited data suggests that employer-sponsored training in Canada is:
- Limited: Canadian firms invest modestly in training—an estimated $240 per employee annually—and lag their international peers in rates and hours of instruction.
- Concentrated: Larger firms are more likely than smaller firms to provide training. Employers in utilities, finance and insurance, and other knowledge-based, technology-rich industries train at above-average rates, while firms in retail, forestry, and oil and gas extraction provide below-average levels of training. Firms in Québec and Ontario are more likely to provide training than firms in the Prairies or Atlantic provinces
- ROI and workplace-focused: Given their concern for return on investment (ROI), firms tend to invest in training for immediate needs—such as onboarding and orientation, technology adoption, addressing skills gaps, and implementing innovations—and favour on-the-job and at-workplace modes of delivery over classroom and other external options.
- Inequitably distributed: Training is more likely to be offered to employees with higher levels of education; in professional, scientific, and technology-focused roles; in their prime working ages (i.e., aged 25 to 54 years versus 16 to 24 or 55 to 64 years); and in full-time, permanent positions (versus part-time and/or precarious positions).
Gaining a clearer picture of the employer-sponsored training ecosystem and assessing whether policy interventions are achieving results requires better data. We recommend that Statistics Canada design and field an ongoing, representative, large-sample survey that asks consistent questions about training investments and activities; motives and barriers; types, modes, and distribution among employees; use and value of training-related programs and policies; and firm demographics and performance.
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