Glossary

For a more detailed definition of labour market terms and issues, see Understanding the Labour Market published by the Information Development and Marketing Branch of Alberta Advanced Education and Career Development (ISBN 07732-06167). Also see Job Futures for the Glossaries of Terms in the World of Work, Part 1 and Part 2.

Accreditation - process by which agency or association grants public recognition to a training institution, program of study or service which meets certain pre-set standards.

Alternative Work Arrangements - recognizing that some people are interested in more flexible work arrangements and shorter hours, some employers have either initiated or negotiated alternative work-time arrangements with employees. These include job sharing, flex-time and compressed work weeks. They offer the possibility of moving from the model of the flexible worker to the model of the flexible workplace, one in which the needs of the organization and the needs of employees are recognized and reconciled. In a flexible workplace, the hours of work can be varied to meet the preferences of workers consistent with employer needs, but employees can also work predictable hours and receive a predictable income.

Attrition - jobs that are vacated due to retirement or death of the workers.

Business Cycle - fluctuations in economic activity characterized by periods of economic boom and downturn.

Career - is a lifestyle concept that involves a sequence of work and leisure activities in which one engages throughout a lifetime. Careers are unique to each person and are dynamic, unfolding throughout life. They include not only occupations, but pre-vocational and post vocational concerns as well as how persons balance their work and personal life roles.

Census - a survey of all Canadians conducted every five years across Canada by Statistics Canada. Used to determine population characteristics such as number of people, ages, education level attained, employment, unemployment, occupations, earnings, etc.

Certification - issuance of a formal document attesting to a set of skills, knowledge and abilities possessed by the holder often linked to completion of education/training requirements.

Data Worker - one of two types of information worker, data workers work with information by manipulating data.

Demand - an occupation is considered to be in demand when the ratio of Employment Insurance claimants to total vacancies is 4:1 or less than five vacancies are recorded in the month.

Demography - the study of population patterns which provides information such as statistics on birth, death, age, sex, marital status, family size, education, geographic location, occupation and disease.

Discouraged Workers - people who are unemployed and have given up looking for work.

Econometric Model - tools for measurement used in forecasting, which extrapolate from statistics.

Employment Growth - the creation of new jobs.

Employment Requirement - the number of workers required by a specific industry to provide a certain quantity of goods and services. Synonymous with "demand."

Employment/Population Ratio - percentage of the working-age population which is employed.

Fifteen Plus Population - everyone over the age of 15.

Forecast - extrapolates from present information very specifically with reference to a short time frame. It predicts what may occur but does not change or impact on social changes.

Household Sector - people who stay home and do not seek paid employment inside or outside the home. Discouraged workers become part of the household sector.

Intrapreneurship - Entrepreneurial skills applied to thinking within a large company.

Job - a paid position requiring a group of specific attributes enabling a person to perform a configuration of tasks in an organization.

Knowledge Worker - one of two types of information workers, knowledge workers use the information and data organized by data workers to plan and create.

Knowledge-based Economy - an economy based on the development of information and dominated by specialized, sophisticated industries such as pharmaceuticals and consulting industries.

Labour Force Survey - a survey conducted monthly across Canada by Statistics Canada of approximately 48,800 households in 10 provinces representing 100,000 respondents.

Labour Force - that part of the working-age population participating in work or actively job searching. Retired people, students, people not actively seeking work or unavailable for work for other reasons are not part of the labour force.

Labour Market - arena where those who are in need of labour and those who can supply the labour come together.

Labour Market Information - information concerning conditions in, or the operation of, the labour market such as data on employment, wages, standards and qualifications, job openings, working conditions.

Licensure - provides, to those holding a licence, the exclusive right to practise certain legally defined functions.

Occupation - a group of similar jobs found in different industries or organizations (Herr and Cramer, nd.).

Occupational Mobility - Ability of a worker to move from one job to another without experiencing an extended period of unemployment. Can be from position to position, or from one geographical location to another, e.g., worker to supervisor, or plumber in Ontario to plumber in Manitoba.

Interoccupational Mobility - ability of workers to move from one job to another outside of their occupational family, e.g., English teacher to television scriptwriter or office administrator to Web site developer.

Intraoccupational Mobility - ability of workers to move from one job to another within an occupational family, e.g., auto mechanic to truck mechanic or carpenter to cabinetmaker.

Occupational Standards - benchmarks against which occupations and/or the people in those occupations are measured.

Participation Rate - the number of people in the labour force divided by the total working-age population gives a percentage known as the participation rate.

Placement Centres - centres which provide the service of matching individuals with job openings.

Profession - an occupation that requires special skills and advanced training.

Protected Industries - industries (such as pulp and paper) that are protected from competition. The government places a tax or tariff on imports into the country in that industry's product.

Re-entrants - individuals who are returning to the work force after an absence.

Red Seal - a nationally registered trademark symbol adopted for the Interprovincial Standards Program to signify interprovincial qualification of tradespersons at the journeyperson level. It is a passport that allows the holder to work anywhere in Canada without having to write further examinations.

Reference Week - the one week of the month (containing the 15th day) in which the Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey is done.

Replacement Level - the level when births equal deaths in the population.

Sector - in some instances, this term may be used to describe a grouping of industries or a grouping of occupations.

Sector Council - permanent organizations that bring together representatives from business, labour, education and other professional groups to study human resource challenges, identify solutions and manage the implementation of the sector study recommendations.

Standardization - act of increasing the uniformity of a product or service and decreasing the extent of variation.

Skill - an attribute a worker has to complete a work task.

Multi-skilling - to learn skills that allow a worker to perform a broader range of duties than those that are technically included in one occupational description.

Upskilling - to study or train to increase one's level of skills.

Trend - a long-term change in social direction, broad in scope and identified by many sources. There is a traceable history. A trend changes known conditions.

Unemployment

Cyclical - workers gain and lose jobs according to the boom and bust cycles of the economy. For example, the oil workers have lots of work when the price of oil is up; when prices fall, workers are out of work.

Frictional - usually for a short duration, people who are between jobs by choice because the last job was unfulfilling, didn't pay enough, they wanted to change jobs or for other reasons.

Seasonal - people not working due to regular fluctuations in demand, e.g., crop harvesters are only in demand for part of the year, and demand for construction work diminishes greatly in winter climates.

Structural - job vacancies that require different skills than the workers have, either due to a lack of training or to geography. For example, a hockey player who can no longer play the game and has no skills to match employer needs or, the need for tool-and-die makers is great in Calgary but the unemployed tool-and-die makers are in Windsor.

Working-Age Population - section of the population over 15 who are not living on Indian reserves, as inmates of institutions or as full-time members of the armed forces.

Definitions adapted from:

Alberta Advanced Education and Career Development. Understanding the Labour Market, 1997.

Ettinger, J. (ed). Improved Career Decision Making in a Changing World, 1991.

Herr and Cramer. Career Guidance and Counselling Through the Life Span. Systematic Approaches, 1988.

Human Resources Development Canada, Applied Research Branch. Job Futures 2000. World of Work.

Human Resources Development Canada. LMI Handbook: a guide to local labour market information analysis (2nd Edition), 1990.