Automation Across the Nation: Understanding the potential impacts of technological trends across Canada

Executive Summary

The advent and rapid adoption of new technologies, such as machine learning and advanced robotics, have resurfaced concerns over technology eliminating jobs. Many now worry that more jobs are at risk than ever before. However, this debate all too often ignores the complexity of technology’s relationship to labor. Technological advancements throughout Canada’s history have helped to drive innovation and raise productivity, improve wealth and increase consumption, and give rise to entirely new industries and economic opportunities. As a result, in the long run, technology has often helped to produce more jobs than it destroyed.

Whether or not this trend continues, technology will continue to change the kinds of jobs available and the skills they require. This can take a toll on workers filling roles that can largely be substituted by technology. Canada has already witnessed drastic shifts in the composition of its labor market, partially driven by technological change. In the 1980s and 1990s, advances in information communications technology (ICT) reduced the need for many routine tasks across the economy, such as the calculations performed by many bookkeepers. At the same time, these technologies helped improve the productivity of jobs demanding creativity, complex problem-solving, and interpersonal interaction, such as those filled by lawyers, managers, and scientists. These changes contributed to larger employment shares for both high and low-skilled workers in Canada, at the expense of the middle-skilled.