Canada's aging workforce has been on the radar at Workforce Planning Hamilton for many years. In 2013 we released a research paper, Listening to the Voices of Experienced Workers in Hamilton: Workforce Barriers and Solutions. This project entailed interviewing 20 experienced workers (people 45 years of age+) to discover their barriers to employment.
Last year WPH and our employment services partners participated in a focus group facilitated by the Hamilton Council on Aging, which discovered that there are no specific employment supports in Hamilton for mature workers. In addition, WPH surveyed employment service providers on the challenges their job seeking mature clients face.
Although some mature workers face barriers to employment others are dominating certain sectors and occupations and this is the focus of a new study released today (July 25/19).
Insights on Canadian Society: Occupations with Older Workers, is a Statistics Canada study which uses 2016 Census and Labour Force Survey data to investigate which occupations are dominated by older workers and what this might mean for the future of our workforce.
An area of concern is that workers who provide care to an increasingly older population are themselves aging. Among female registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses, 1 in 5 were aged 55 and over in 2016, compared with 1 in 10 in 1996.
In some cases, an occupation with aging workers and relatively few younger workers can be a symptom of industries or trades that are in decline in Canada.
