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July 05, 2018STUDY: ARE CANADIAN JOBS MORE OR LESS SKILLED THAN AMERICAN JOBS? Statistics Canada's Analytical Studies Branch has released a paper entitled "Are Canadian Jobs More or Less Skiled than American Jobs?", which compares the skill requirements of actual jobs held by workers in Canada and in the United States. Using two data sources -- the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (a survey developed by the OECD, and conducted in 2011-2012), and occupation codes from the Occupational Information Network database -- the study compares the skill levels of Canadian to American jobs in 35 different areas.
The gap in labour productivity showing that Canada lags behind the US (in output per hour worked) is attributed to differences in machinery and equipment investment, the capital-labour ration, trade openness, and capacity utilization, as well as differences in firm size. The study looks at the possible role of differences in work-related, productivity enhancing skills within the productivity gap. This study provides a first look at the skill level requirements of jobs held by Canadian and American workers, examining 35 different skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM skills) in several complementary areas. Skill level requirements of the job versus skills of workers also provides a slightly different look, as not all workers' skills will be used in the jobs in which they work.
Thirty-five skills were examined separately, under the following groupings: Reading Comprehension; Writing; Mathematics; Science; Process, complex problem solving and systems; Social; Technical operation and maintenance; Technical design and analysis; and Resource Management. No classification determination was made for STEM vs. non-STEM skills. The main outcome is the percentage differences in skill level requirements for Canadian and US jobs.
The results compare Canadian and American skill levels by occupation, age, sex, educational attainment, and immigrant status. Some highlights are as follows:
- In 30 out of 35 areas, the average Canadian job requires a higher skill level than the average American job
- The largest occupational skill advantages for Canadian workers are in non-university postsecondary graduates, in which several STEM and non-STEM skill areas are performed at a considerably higher level among Canadian non-university postsecondary graduates.
- At the university level (comparing university graduates to non-university post-secondary grads), Canadians hold higher-skilled jobs than Americans in mathematics (a STEM skill area), and in several other technical skill areas, however non-STEM technical skill level requirements are generally quite low in th jobs held by university graduates.
- Among workers with no postsecondary credentials, the US and Canada see very few significant differences in job skill levels.
Five key findings from the paper are:
- A large portion of the gap in job skills can be explained by differences in worker characteristics.
- The combined role of sex, immigrant status and age is small; comparatively much smaller than the role of educational attainment, literacy and numeracy.
- The role of educational attainment can be explained in large part by the higher relative frequency of non-postsecondary graduates in the engineering, manufacturing and construction fields in Canada.
- Literacy and especially numeracy account for a significant portion of the job skill gap, even after accounting for educational attainment. Canadian jobs are more skilled, and Canadian workers have more credentials than American workers and are also more skilled (particularly in numeracy), leading to Canadian workers being matched to more skilled occupations than their US counterparts.
- Differences in numeracy often play a similar role to literacy in explaining the gap in non-STEM and other technical skills.
The study concludes that the skills required for Canadian jobs are significantly higher than for American jobs in 30 of 35 areas examined. It also highlights the importance of non-university postsecondary education credentials in the Canadian economy. It also poses the question of the potential size of the productivity gap between the two countries if Canada did not possess a more skilled workforce compared to the US?
Source: Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series, Issue number 2018406
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