Everyone expects automation and other tech advances to eliminate some jobs and create others. But in a new report, Canadian futurists say there's a far wider range of trends that could influence the types of skills that are likely to be in demand — or not — in the future.
Focusing too closely on the impact of technological change alone could create blind spots that leave Canadians unprepared to handle changes to the labour market, says the report, released Wednesday and entitled Turn and Face the Strange: Changes Impacting the Future of Employment in Canada.
The report was written by researchers at the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship, a non-partisan policy institute housed at Toronto's Ryerson University. It was set up to help Canadian policy-makers navigate the growth of Canada's innovation economy, said Sarah Doyle, the institute's director of policy and research.
In the past, forecasters have spent a lot of time trying to quantify how tech changes will affect the skills employers look for, said Doyle. "What this report is doing is looking at a far more complicated picture about how a wide range of trends may be interacting in different ways to influence the types of skills that are likely to be in demand."
