BioTalent Canada to conduct national labour market survey

BioTalent Canada is pleased to announce it will be conducting a national study of Canada’s bio-economy labour market supply and demand over the next three years. This Labour Market Information (LMI) project, funded by the Government of Canada’s Sectoral Initiatives Program, will help the industry address current and future skills shortages, encourage strategic workforce planning and alleviate labour market challenges by producing updated and accurate LMI for the Canadian bio-economy.

Current independent and industry driven LMI is critical to better understand the sector’s HR landscape and to develop practical HR strategies to alleviate labour market challenges. BioTalent Canada released its last study in 2013, so that report’s data may not reflect today’s labour market needs or forecast the future requirements of the industry. Through this new project, BioTalent Canada will conduct a widespread census of the companies within the industry to get a full picture of the composition of the bio-economy. Through extensive surveying and interviewing several reports – national, regional, and of key hubs – will be published. The granular reports will focus on the:

• current and future skills shortages,
• supply and demand of workers, and
• data to facilitate employer HR resource planning and management

“We are extremely pleased to continue our strong track record of labour market demand reporting and to expand our research to include the supply side while delivering the data in innovative ways,” says Rob Henderson, president and CEO of BioTalent Canada. “This project aligns perfectly with the recent recommendations outlined in the Health and Biosciences report ‘The Innovation and Competitiveness Imperative,’ released by Canada’s Economic Strategy Tables. The extensive scope of the project will allow, for the first time, a clearer picture of the industry’s potential, which is exciting and will give the bio-economy the information it so desperately needs.”

This project will build on and expand from the baseline data of the 2013 LMI study Sequencing the Data, and leverage BioTalent Canada’s LMI reporting expertise having published over 20 reports since 2007. It will involve working with BioTalent Canada partners and other industry stakeholders to provide granular, real-time and current biotechnology LMI to the industry and investigate short-term, medium and long-term trends of sector-specific labour supply and demand. For more information on this project please visit biotalent.ca/LMI2018