Canadians are increasingly educated and the country’s employment rate keeps climbing. This good news, recently released by Statistics Canada, is from an analysis of the 2006 census.
Between 2001 and 2006, total employment in Canada increased at an annual average growth rate of 1.7%, ahead of all Group of Seven (G7) nations. Italy ranked second (+1.2%), followed by France and the United States. All areas of Canada showed an increase, although growth was strongest in the West, especially Alberta and British Columbia, which showed the greatest increase.
Extraction industry tops the list
In terms of sectors, the fastest growth in employment occurred in the mining and oil and gas extraction industry, in which employment increased at an average pace of 7.5% a year, or almost four times the national average. Alberta alone accounted for 70% of the job growth in this industry. Growth in the construction sector meanwhile posted average growth of 4.5% a year. Canada’s second-largest service industry, health care and social assistance, added 199,900 workers, i.e. 2.6% on average each year, bringing total employment in this sector to 1,667,700 in 2006. The gains were widespread, from ambulatory services to medical laboratories and hospitals. There was also a large increase in retail trade employment, up 1.8% per year on average, for a total gain of 155,800 workers and a total number of retail jobs at just over 1,815,000. Most of the increase in jobs came from grocery stores, building materials and supplies stores and automobile dealerships.
Conversely, the manufacturing sector shed 136,700 jobs during this five-year period, for a decrease of 1.4% a year. The decline in manufacturing jobs was concentrated in central Canada.
Increasingly educated
The news is also good as regards education. Overall, 6 out of every 10 Canadians aged between 25 and 64 had completed some form of postsecondary education, and just under one quarter (24%) of this age group had a high school diploma as their highest level of attainment. One out of every five postsecondary graduates had studied business, management or marketing. No other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nation had a higher proportion of its adult population with a university or college education than Canada.
The number of adults aged between 25 and 64 with a university degree increased by 24% from 3,207,400 in 2001 to 3,985,700 in 2006. Canada ranked sixth among all OECD countries in terms of the proportion of adults aged 25 to 64 who had a university degree, tied with Australia and Korea at 23%. The male/female gap was large: in 2006, one third (33%) of women aged 25 to 34 had a university degree, compared with 25% of their male counterparts.
Statistics Canada also found generational differences. There were fewer young adults studying in trades than their parents. In 2006, about 10% of adults aged 25 to 34 had a trade certification, compared with 13% of adults aged between 55 and 64. Young adults also studied different trades than older generations, with fewer having a trade certificate in mechanics and repairs than their elders. Conversely, more of them had a certificate in personal and culinary services.
Finally, over half of recent immigrants (who arrived between 2001 and 2006) had a university degree, which is more than twice the proportion of Canadian-born degree holders (20%).