Some years ago, I read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel & Dimed: On Not Getting By in America. One of Ehrenreich’s major arguments is that there is no such thing as unskilled labour. Whether it is digging a trench or memorizing hundreds of produce codes, every job requires technical skill. My dissertation is ultimately about how increasing expenditures on educational technology over the last 30 years have transformed the professoriate. Displacing full-time faculty and replacing them with part-time faculty has been a cost containment strategy where technology has pushed out human labour. Whether part-time or full-time, however, all faculty must now possess an even more sophisticated skillset to teach with a proliferation of technological tools and teaching processes.
This report, which sought to understand technical skills, is a Herculean endeavor. It was great to lead a wonderfully talented group of individuals to explore the unique (and not-so-unique) challenges we face as a community.
Global Trends
Over the past 50 years, the share of jobs requiring at least some college education has increased dramatically, and the fastest-growing sectors of the economy are projected to be those jobs requiring new skills driven by advances in technology (Carnevale, 2016). Shifts in technology render some jobs obsolete at the same time these advances create new jobs (Latchem, 2017). This transformation in work includes a shift from high-risk, low-mobility occupations to career pathways in rapid-growth occupations in the clean economy (Sonmez, et al., 2022). Even though technology will eliminate some jobs and create entirely new occupations, the need for talented human beings with truly human skills remains.
Frey and Osborne (2017) identified three sets of tasks that cannot be easily automated, including:
Unstructured and complex tasks;
Tasks requiring creative intelligence;
Tasks related to social intelligence, such as understanding people’s reactions in social contexts or assisting and caring for others.
Strategy, creativity, and compassion will remain important skills no matter how technology advances and transforms the nature of work. Still, the impact of technology on existing and emerging occupations, coupled with the enduring need for human skills, suggests that the region needs a new model of skills and skills acquisition that enables learners to understand the highly technological world around them while nurturing the uniquely human capacities for creativity and flexibility (Aoun, 2017).
National Trends
In Canada, 42% of existing jobs, primarily in manufacturing, agriculture, and the service sector, are either highly automatable or will face substantial change in the coming years (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2018). In addition to advances in technology, significant shifts in energy markets will also give rise to new careers and make others obsolete (Sonmez, et al., 2022). It is expected that 40 percent of all new jobs will be in the skilled trades and technology (Little, 2017), indicating a pressing need to develop a better understanding of the new technical skills demanded by a more sophisticated job market.