Unrealized value of skills vacancies increasing in Canada amid labour shortage

OTTAWA, March 02, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --  The Conference Board of Canada has released a new report today examining the economic impact of skills vacancies in Canada, which found the unrealized value of skill vacancies in the Canadian economy reached $25 billion in 2020, equivalent to 1.3 per cent of GDP.

"Salaries and wages reflect how valuable certain skills are to an organization, and which skills are the most desired among Canadian organizations," said Nachum Gabler, Senior Economist, The Conference Board of Canada. "To minimize the unrealized value going forward, action?whether in the form of public policies or innovative business practices?is needed that can help narrow the gap between the demand for and the supply of skills."

Key findings of the research include:

• The six skills for which vacancies incur the highest costs are active listening, critical thinking, reading comprehension, speaking, monitoring, and coordination
• One way to reduce the unrealized value of skill vacancies is to better match training and educational programs with the identified gaps
• Skills and skill groups can be valued using average incomes and vacancies for those occupations. Doing so allows policymakers and educators to prioritize investments
• The skill group with the highest wage-and-job vacancies value is social and emotional skills, worth $8.5 billion in 2020?making up a third of the unrealized value of unfilled skills demand arising from job vacancies that year
• We see social and emotional skills and basic daily skills trending toward the top of the list for unrealized value, while management-oriented and task- and technical-oriented skills are found mostly in the bottom half of the distribution
• Conversely, the skill vacancy with the lowest unrealized value was installation, for which the value in 2020 was just over $100 million, slightly less than one-tenth the value associated with active listening

The research is available at the link here. Media should contact [email protected] with any questions or interview requests.

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