Labour Market Forecasts for Canada’s Inclusive Smart Economy

This report is a supplement to its two sister publications—Moving Toward an Inclusive Smart Economy for Canada: The Human Talent Engine that Powers Smarter Cities and Bringing a “Smart City” to Life: Understanding Talent Development, Attraction, and Retention—that focus on key drivers for smart city related labour demand and supply, respectively. This set of reports represents the culmination of a multi-year research initiative on smart cities related jobs, skills, training programs, and the social impacts of smart cities in Canada by the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC). The analysis that follows in this report is therefore best viewed in the context of the entire set of reports.

Building on the key insights from the primary research underpinning its two sister publications, and secondary data from Statistics Canada, the Government of Canada, and other public-and private-sector sources, this report includes labour market forecasts focused on projecting short-and long-term labour demand and supply for key smart city related occupations in 14 smart cities across Canada. The census metropolitan areas (CMAs)under focus in this project were chosen to represent geographic reach and a balance of industries in Canada—the list includes the eight largest Canadian urban agglomerations, as well as the largest metropolises from most provinces.

Short-term employment forecasts for the key smart city related occupations in the study focus CMAs are based on the outlook for near-term business cycle factors. Long-term projections are split across the key demand and supply streams, and rely on more granular analysis of the links between industries, occupations, educational streams ,the age profiles of the occupational workforce across provinces and cities, and long-term demographic flows ,including population and labour force growth, domestic and international migration, and occupational mobility and transitions.