• Provide strong knowledge base for integrated planning and collaboration on local labour market solutions.
• Lay the foundation for a community-driven, consensus-based future action plan developed by diverse stakeholders (e.g., employers, service providers, levels of government).

• Communicate existing programs and services and current LMI to job seekers, employers, educators and other stakeholders to inform their decision-making.

• Identify and explore research, data and service gaps

Produce timely, usable, accurate, and accessible labour market information (LMI).

Design tools and approaches towards facilitating career, education and workplace decision-making for Toronto industry, workers, and jobseekers.

Support programs and policymakers to determine what works for whom in workforce development – whether it is youth struggling to enter the workforce, mid-career workers who have lost their jobs because of closings or layoffs, and older workers who must adapt to changing employment circumstances.

Conduct rigorous but inexpensive evaluations of workforce development initiatives. Our evaluations are collaborative and understand that the best evaluation
approaches do not make judgements, but are instead geared toward program improvement.

Changing Make-Up of In-demand Skills

Increase in demand for:

• digital skills
• soft skills, critically important for employability/job transferability

Immigration Changes

• Toronto is increasingly reliant on immigration for labour force growth, while pandemic has negatively affected immigration rates
• Immigrants account for 50% of GTA labour force
• Federal Government restrictions on international travel profoundly affected GTA’s growth, chart below.

Taken together, these data sources with analyses can help to inform program and policy directions for the coming year.

• Agriculture
• Manufacturing
• Education
• Healthcare
• Public Administration

• Some data is counter-intuitive
• There has been a significant amount written about the “gig” economy and subsequent changing relationship between employers & workers
• There is evidence of these changes however they are not necessarily reflected in Toronto’s LFS data
• RE: Chart 5 BELOW: % of Toronto residents reporting self-employment has DECREASED from pre-pandemic levels

Other proxy measures for Toronto’s economy and labour force include the number of new business licenses and renewals.

Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com/business/2022/03/11/statistics-canada-scheduled-to-say-how-labour-market-faredifne-bruary.htm

• Even during the pandemic, the number of unique online job postings in the City of Toronto continued to increase over time
• The biggest increases in job posting data by industry were in the financial, health care & technological sectors
• In all three sectors, the number of job postings more than doubled over the last 9 years
• Indicated in the above chart, Toronto’s finance sector (the second largest financial sector in North America) continued to hire employees during the pandemic
• Financial sector has not had any major job losses or layoffs during this pandemic
• Technology services, health care and the hospitality sector also had substantial job postings during 2022

• With the global pandemic, the education system globally experienced a significant shift switching from in-person learning to distance learning
• The predominant mode of distance learning is online
• Distance learning can also be offline, fully remote without using the Internet
  • ie. course delivery in print format via mail
• In-person learning takes place entirely within a physical classroom with peers and instructor present
• Dividing line between distance and in-person learning is hybrid learning
• Hybrid learning: experience designed to combine both online and in-person instruction
• Theoretical component of learning material is delivered online whereas labs are delivered in classrooms

Mix of online and in-person interaction, involving use of technologies to facilitate:

• multi-modality
• flexibility
• student choice

Term hybrid: umbrella term capturing all different types of hybrid learning like:

• flipped learning
• hyflex learning
• online learning with in-person intensive component

HyFlex: (Hybrid + Flexible) prioritizes freedom and flexibility

• Day-to-day basis, learners choose how they engage in learning ie in-person or virtual
• Strong indication hybrid learning will play a critical role, especially in postsecondary education
• February 1, 2022, province launched a preview site for online courses to help students explore and choose courses for fall 2022

The Ministry of Education also released Policy/ Program Memorandum 167 (PPM) mandating that students earn a minimum of two online learning credits to receive an Ontario Secondary School Diploma. The province has announced its plans to introduce legislation this spring to make remote learning a permanent part of Ontario’s education system.

• Automation and robotics dominated workforce development discussions and research
• Covid-19 may hasten this shift
• Consensus: workers performing manual routine tasks like production and those doing cognitive routine work ie. sales/ clerical support are being affected
• Statistic Canada report looked at the evolving nature of the workplace from 1987 to 2018
• Notes, “While gradual changes in the nature of work were observed over the 31 years studied, events such as the Covid-19 pandemic may prompt employers to adopt automation technology more quickly,” the Stats Canada study notes [ii].
• The share of workers employed in production, craft, repair and operative occupations, which are classified as routine and manual asks dropped from 29.7% in 1987 to 22.2% in 2018
• Meanwhile, the share of workers employed in sales, clerical and administrative support occupations, which are classified as routine and cognitive tasks, also decreased over the same 31-year period from 27.3% in 1987 to 24.9% in 2018
• The authors note that the pandemic, “may prompt employers to adopt automation technology more quickly to limit the risks associated with workers’ vulnerability to the virus.”

A Crisis for Medical Technicians in Toronto

• While the shortage of personal support workers has been well-publicized, solutions examined and taken – less is known about the state of/need for medical technicians.
• According to the Medical Laboratory Professionals’ Association of Ontario (MLPAO), 70% of labs and other technical health services are short-staffed.
• However, it is not clear what the extent of the problem in Toronto and/or whether the shortage is only short-term due to COVID
•  However, large employers TWIG has talked to (e.g. Lifelabs) have indicated serious concern about the supply of medical technologists.

The Great Resignation: Is it Occurring in Toronto and How Serious is it?

There is now a growing body of evidence and think pieces written in the past few months about what exactly is driving the so-called Great Resignation.

• While the data in the United States is quite compelling -the data is less clear in Canada.
• Are people leaving the workforce to start their own businesses?
• Is it low-wage workers using a tiny bit of new leverage to demand better work?
• Or is it more about professionals who can afford to be choosy searching for jobs that better align with their values and aspirations?

A recent paper by MIT Sloan mined various sets of data from Burning Glass and other sources to determine “why” so many individuals have left the workforce during the pandemic with associated advice to both employers and workforce
development agencies with how to re-engage with those who left the workforce and how to encourage them back.