This chapter provides information on the importance of creating classification
systems to collect, record and forecast labour market information. The
ability to "monitor" the labour market in this way provides
practitioners and job seekers with valuable information for making career
and employment decisions. Topics include:
the structure of work;
industry classifications, with an introduction to the North American
Industrial Classifications system (NAICS);
occupational classifications, with an introduction to the National
Occupational Classification (NOC) and its career guidance companion,
the Career Handbook (CH);
labour market forecasting, with an introduction to the Canadian
Occupational Projection System (COPS); and
an overview of inter- and intra-occupational mobility.
A. Structure of Work
Imagine a library where all the books and resource materials are mixed
up as if in a big stew. There are no signs on the shelves, no numbers
on the books and no groupings of similar-content books. Books are placed
on the shelves in a completely random fashion. It becomes obvious very
quickly that any method of classification will reduce the time and effort
necessary to find what is needed.
The library/books situation is analogous to the classification of work
in society. The grouping of types of work is an indispensable aid to
society for career decision making and human resource planning. Occupational
and industrial classification systems provide frameworks for descriptions
of different work roles, career paths and factors affecting change in
the labour market.
Members of society have always been able to name those jobs that have
status (head of the clan, warrior), jobs that have high rewards (skilled
hunter, trapper) and jobs that need the longest training time (shaman,
storyteller). They would also recognize the similarity of certain work
(farmer, rancher, cowhand = occupational group) and that different types
of work are necessary to create success in a market enterprise (cloth-maker,
seamstress, store owner = industry).
With the evolution of society has come an evolution in information
gathering about the division of labour, and classification systems have
become more sophisticated and elaborate over time. Today, classification
systems allow the collection of occupational and industrial data through
the Census, the Labour Force Survey (LFS), the Workplace and Employee
Survey (WES) and administrative data. This monitoring facilitates decisions
about immigration policies, employment insurance, employment equity,
recruitment and training programs, etc. The classification systems are
also used for private and provincial surveys because the uniformity
of information gathering allows for easy comparison of data.
Trends in Classification
Work roles. The rapid evolution of skill sets needed
to perform multi-tasks, a widening variety of projects, plus
increased contracting out, consulting and multiple jobs have
led many career practitioners to refer to work roles instead
of occupations. The work roles being filled by many workers
today, especially in the knowledge work area, often encompass
duties and tasks that no longer fit the more static occupational
title once assigned to that position in the organization.
Skills classifications system and skills-based monitoring
of the labour market. The two standard classification structures
currently used in Canada for gathering and analyzing (monitoring)
labour market information are occupational structures and industrial
structures (described later in this chapter). More detailed
skills definitions of work roles and a need to identify gaps
for targeted production improvements (competition) has directed
researchers toward developing a skills classification for monitoring
the goings-on of the labour market. Such a classification system
could provide benefits, such as a more specific view of employer
requirements, curriculum development to match skill needs, identification
of common skills across occupations and skills gap analysis
that will simplify employee upgrading programs.
Plain language labour market information. Labour market
information has had a reputation for being particularly unfriendly
to other than economists and labour market analysts. But the
availability of information on the Internet and consumer demand
for more information has developers working to make the information
easily digestible by other professionals and the public.
Knowledge-based occupational classification scheme.
The increase in knowledge-based workers has led to a need for
analysis of the impact of this development on the labour market.
In conducting their studies, Lavoie and Roy (1998) developed
a classification scheme that starts with information and non-information
workers. The non-information workers are services and goods
workers. The information workers are broken down into knowledge
workers, management workers and data workers. Their classification
of knowledge consists of pure science, applied science, engineer,
computer, and social sciences and humanities workers. Management
classification includes two groups: science and technology managers
and other managers. Lavoie and Roy (1998) use this knowledge-based
occupational classification to analyze the increase or decrease
of workers in this field and provide argument that such a system
can supply a more accurate description than a strictly industrial
approach.
The Immigrant view. Accommodating to changes in demographics
(increased need for immigrant workers to fill skills gaps) and
to consumer demand (increased need by immigrants for skills
information) has resulted in an expanded Internet version of
the National Occupational Classification (NOC) with a new section
that has been rewritten for the immigrant reader.
For now, two main classification structures exist and are in official
use: one for industries and the other for occupations. A useful way
to think about the distinction between occupation and industry is that
an occupation is what a person does and an industry is where
a person does it. Nursing is the kind of work (occupation) a nurse does,
but he or she can perform that work in the health care industry (hospital
surgical nurse) or in the education sector (school nurse) or in forestry
(occupational health and safety nurse). (Note: industry and sector are
used interchangeably here.)
