Welcome to the monthly newsletter that helps you make sense of how careers actually happen in Canada – cutting through the noise of labour market data, education decisions, and a rapidly changing world of work. Whether you're navigating your own career, supporting someone else through theirs, or thinking about how to build better career development in your school or organization, this is for you.
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Deep Dive: How do the words we use to talk about careers produce bad advice, bad decisions, and bad policy?
Myth of the Month: Are gig and platform workers doomed to precarity?
The Number That Surprised Me: How much does poor mental health cost employers? Worth Bookmarking: The Government of Alberta's graduate outcomes dashboard |
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Not long ago, a funder of short-term training programs was insistent that the programs needed to include apprenticeships, while the program director advocated it should include co-ops instead. Neither realized they were using terms with specific meanings. In fact, both apprenticeships and co-ops are types of work-integrated learning, and neither was feasible to implement in the kind of program they were developing. A lot of career advice fails because the vocabulary of careers is so loosely-defined that people are routinely answering different questions than they were asked, and neither the asker nor the answerer sees the gap.
This isn’t just pedantic – this impacts people, programs, and policies. Here are a few examples: - Job vs. Career: Governments talk a lot about getting people into good-paying jobs (their words, not mine – if I'm being pedantic, I'd prefer 'well-paying jobs’). Creating job opportunities that pay well is good – but it’s worth distinguishing this goal from getting people onto career paths. Sometimes, people get stuck in jobs that pay well but don’t help them develop the skills they need to advance or compete in the broader labour market. When our employment goal is only to get people into jobs, we measure success at the moment of hiring, and skip the long-term measures like productivity, mobility, and fulfillment that make this employment sustainable.
- Title vs. Occupation: Individuals most commonly search for work using job titles ("UX Designer” or "Policy Analyst”). Labour market data, government funding, and immigration pathways, however, are based on occupations (in Canada, called NOC Codes), which group several titles under a single profile. That mismatch means job seekers reading labour market data can’t see the nuanced differences between job titles within a single occupation. Further, training programs and immigration pathways are sometimes designed for an occupation when there may only be a shortage for one title within it.
- Sector vs. Industry: I was recently at an event where a researcher in the skills development space lamented, “I’ve never seen a country so obsessed with sectors. Everything is sectors, sectors, sectors!” And she’s right. But people often use this term to mean “industry” while it also has other meanings.
“Sector” can be used to describe economic activity (like the primary sector which extracts raw materials as opposed to the secondary sector which turns those materials into goods), ownership models (like the public, private, and non-profit sectors), and employers doing similar work (as in classification systems like NAICS). This last meaning overlaps with what people casually call “industry” – but this linguistic compression obscures different levels of analysis, which hinders individuals’ ability to accurately diagnose and treat problems in their careers.
For example, a frustrated marketer may move from a bank to a telecom company. But because both roles are in the private sector, some underlying structural conditions may persist in their new role. If these were the source of their frustration, they may not be resolved by a change of industry alone.
This same imprecision can show up in research: when researchers define the term “sector” differently, studies measure employment outcomes and transitions in inconsistent ways, making findings difficult to compare. When workforce development programs and post-secondary curricula get built on that research, we risk operating on a faulty foundation.
- Co-op vs. Internship: When I worked as a career counsellor on a university campus, I had several hundred students each winter ask me how they could get a summer internship. Many were searching for jobs with the title “Intern” and not finding many postings, especially outside of major corporations. This approach bothered me so much that I wrote an article about how it was leading them to overlook other relevant opportunities.
I’ve read hundreds of Reddit threads in which high school and university students ask questions about choosing the right post-secondary program, only for many to answer that a program with co-op is always the best option because students gain relevant work experience, which helps them build skills and connections. A student who can’t find any co-op programs in their major or who can’t afford to move to attend one deserves to know that it is often possible to gain experience, develop skills, and build their network through a non-co-op program, too – it just may take more initiative.
When young people, parents, teachers, guidance counsellors, career advisors, job seekers, and policymakers are all using the same words to mean different things, the result isn’t just miscommunication – it’s bad educational choices, drawn-out job searches, bad hiring decisions, flawed policy, wasted investments, and poor program design. Over time, it becomes a cycle: individuals who misunderstand and misuse language build systems, the systems reinforce and legitimize the misuse, and users of those systems absorb it as correct. Rinse, repeat. Although I believe this is usually not due to malicious intent, there are bad actors who will take advantage of a system with gaping holes. Some post-secondary institutions may misrepresent the work-integrated learning experiences they offer or their graduates’ outcomes because they benefit from the enrollment those stories drive. Some employers may write that they’re looking for a new graduate hire with “internship experience” because it feels cumbersome to describe anything different and, in doing so, cost themselves a strong applicant who doesn’t understand that a co-op or a standard summer job could qualify them.
So, the next time you're in a room where people are talking about careers, and you suspect they aren't quite talking about the same thing, pay attention to that. Ask what they really mean, and how they know. Your question may just be the foundation of better advice, better programs, and a stronger system. |
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Myth: Gig and platform-based work is necessarily precarious (a term that actually has no standard definition, but typically indicates work that is low-wage, temporary, involuntarily part-time, and lacking the protections of standard employment). Reality: Uber drivers in Victoria, BC ratified the first collective agreement for app-based workers in Canada. Their contract will provide them with greater regulation, representation, and protection. Given that the number of people earning income from apps and platforms is growing, and that the primary downsides of platform-based work are related to job quality, it will be interesting to see whether unionization improves income predictability, job security, and working conditions, and drives more people towards this type of work. |
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THE NUMBER THAT SURPRISED ME |
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$110 Billion: The cost Canadian employers pay per year for poor employee mental health. These costs show up in presenteeism, absenteeism, disability claims, wage replacements, and more. This number is especially notable given talk about low productivity in Canada. Although poor mental health is not typically caused or resolved by one’s workplace alone, work has an impact – which underscores the importance of job quality and fulfillment, mentioned in this month’s Deep Dive. |
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The Government of Alberta’s dashboards detailing their graduates’ transitions from post-secondary to career. This is the first dashboard of this kind I’ve seen that separates outcomes from publicly-funded institutions and private career colleges (and I’ll save the difference between “college” and “career college” for another issue). Two findings worth noting, which contradict commonly held myths: - Doctoral graduates are far more likely than graduates at any other level to end up in temporary employment (32% vs. 15%).
- Physical and life science grads are almost as likely as arts and communication technology grads to say that their job is not related to their program (28% vs. 31%).
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Thanks for reading this month's edition of Pathways & Paycheques. If this sparked a question or shifted your understanding of the world of work, please reply to let me know. I'm an Inbox Zero evangelist, so you can be sure I'll read it!
Sincerely,
Carli |
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Midtown
Toronto, ON M5N, Canada |
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