Career Education and Labour Market Conditions: The Skills Gap Myth.

The rhetoric surrounding career education programs was examined by exploring two questions. The first question was which employment sectors anticipate significant job growth and what skill levels and academic competencies were required to work within those sectors. The second question was whether increasing the level of student knowledge and skill made a difference in addressing the problems identified as the motivation for various skill initiatives in career education programs. The analysis focused on labor patterns in British Columbia. The analysis established that little evidence exists to support the widespread assumption of a growing skills gap separating the academic abilities of students leaving secondary school and the actual competencies required for current and projected employment opportunities. Rather, the major job growth areas in Canada and other industrialized countries appeared to be in low-salaried, low-skill service occupations in the hospitality, food service, and retail sectors. The assumption of many policymakers that a highly skilled labor market protects national competitiveness and that investment in education and training helps form the human capital that is vital to ensuring economic growth and individual advancement and reducing inequality were also concluded to be flawed. Career education was called a reflection of neoliberal ideology. (Contains 29 references.) (MN)