An excerpt from an article by Nobina Robinson, CEO of Polytechnics Canada. Read in full on Huffington Post.

“We have a 21st century economy, so why do we have a 20th century labour market?” This is the question posed on the homepage of Boston-based Burning Glass, a private firm that analyzes 40,000 websites daily in an attempt to determine where job market opportunities exist and what talent is needed to fill them. The goal is to close the skills gap in the United States by matching skills to people, and people to jobs. Burning Glass is an example of “big data” being leveraged to tackle a pressing public policy challenge.

Canada too shares the same challenge: our labour market is not evolving to help companies compete globally. Modernizing our labour market requires two things: a talent pool equipped with the appropriate skill sets, and an up-to-date approach on collecting and sharing labour market data.