Education in Canada (American Sign Language) - Video transcript
(The Statistics Canada, Canada wordmark and the title: “Education in Canada (American Sign Language)” are on screen)
Canada continues to lead the G7 for the most educated workforce, with 57.5% of the working-age population having a college or university credential. A key factor in this is Canada's strong college sector: nearly one in four working-age people had a college certificate or diploma or similar credential in 2021, more than in any other G7 country.
From 2016 to 2021, the working-age population saw an increase of nearly one-fifth in the number of people with a bachelor's degree or higher, including even larger rises in degree holders in the fields of health care and computer and information science.
In contrast, the number of working-age apprenticeship certificate holders has stagnated or fallen in construction trades, mechanic and repair technologies, and precision production, as fewer young workers replace the baby boomers who are retiring.
Recent immigrants made up nearly half of the growth in the share of Canadians with a bachelor's degree or higher. However, some immigrants' talents remain underutilized, as over one-quarter of all immigrants with foreign degrees were working in jobs that require, at most, a high school diploma. This is twice as high as the overqualification rate for Canadian-born or Canadian-educated degree holders.
Even foreign-educated immigrants with credentials in high-demand areas such as health care faced high rates of job mismatch.
The share of Canadian-born young adults aged 25 to 34 with a bachelor's degree or higher also rose by 2.7 percentage points from 2016 to 2021. The increase was larger among Canadian-born young women than Canadian-born young men.
Educational gaps faced by First Nations people, Métis and Inuit are narrowing at the high school level. In 2021, over half of Inuit aged 25 to 64 had completed high school, up from 45.4% in 2016. At the same time, gaps are widening at the level of a bachelor's degree or higher for all Indigenous groups.
People with credentials above the bachelor level were better able to weather the labour market shocks of the pandemic, partly due to working in industries that were more suited to remote work. They had higher employment rates and earnings in 2021 than 2016, while those with most other levels of education saw lower employment rates.
Definitions and concepts, data at the provincial and territorial levels, as well as more findings are available in The Daily of November 30, 2022.
(The Canada wordmark is on screen)