In the interest of accuracy, we are updating our report, “The Skills Algorithm: Digital Skills Demand Across Canada’s Labour Market” to correct a data error in one subsection. The correction neither alters the analysis conducted within the report, nor the report’s overall conclusion.
The report analyzed 9 million online job postings collected by Vicinity Jobs from across Canada, to assess in-demand digital and non-digital skills between 2020 and 2023. Through this analysis, we calculated the month-to-month growth of demand for AI and machine learning skills.
Earlier this month, Vicinity Jobs notified us of an update to their data. The update was required due to issues related to one data source, representing about 1% of all job postings, which added a standard boilerplate statement that referenced AI to all of its job postings, starting in July 2023, which was not correctly filtered out of the data.
As the updated figure below shows, the increase in AI skills was more gradual than initially stated, with an increase in demand occurring between August and September of 2023 (increasing from 0.6% of jobs demanding AI skills to 0.8%), with a sustained level of demand onward. This was previously incorrectly reported as a growth in the proportion of jobs with AI skills from 0.6% to 1.6% between June and July 2023.
As of April 2024, AI skills were found in 1.0% of all job postings. This still reflects an ongoing increased interest in integrating AI in products and services. Though AI skills are more widely sought than skills such as Python and JavaScript, skills using CRM software, SAP and SQL remain in higher demand than AI (which was originally incorrectly stated as otherwise).
We sincerely regret the error, and thank Vicinity Jobs for working with us to correct this issue.
The Dais at TMU.
UPDATED FIGURE 21
OLD FIGURE 21
