Technology and the demand for skills in Canada: an industry-level analysis

In this paper we examine the effect of technological change on the relative demand for skilled workers across Canadian industries. We find that skill upgrading at the aggregate level is less evident in Canada than in the United States and other industrialized economies over the 1981-94 period. Behind this overall trend on skill upgrading, there is substantial variation across industrial sectors. Consistent with the skill-biased technological change hypothesis, the technology indicators - the stock of patents used by the industry and the age of capital stock - are found to be significantly correlated with skill intensity.