On March 3, the Automotive Industries Association of Canada announced the official launch of a new labour market intelligence initiative for the automotive aftermarket industry.
During a special event hosted at Centennial College’s Ashtonbee Campus in Scarborough, Ontario, Jean-Francois Champagne, President, AIA Canada, said in regards to the Aftermarket Labour Market Intelligence (ALMI) initiative that, “this project is of great importance to the automotive aftermarket because, as an industry association, we regularly receive requests for information on the labour market from government, industries and the media. Regrettably, the information just isn’t available.”
Champagne also noted that, “the knowledge gap means that decisions in regards to policy development, curriculum planning and strategic hiring for example, are made without a complete and accurate picture of the current state of the aftermarket.”
The Honourable John McKay, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence and Member of Parliament for Scarborough—Guildwood said, “this investment will create more jobs and opportunities in the $21 billion automotive aftermarket industry. The Labour Market information collected will provide a bridge between employers, the close to 400,000 workers and post-secondary institutions such as Centennial College—to identify the skills necessary to meet the demands of an industry experiencing unprecedented growth.”
Funded by the Government of Canada’s Sectoral Initiatives Program, the research stage of the project is already well under way. Researchers are already working to outline the state of the current labour market, as well as provide a gap analysis to identify missing labour market data. The end result will be an online, bilingual interactive tool that is able to track significant labour information for the automotive aftermarket industry. The tool is expected to launch during the second half of 2018.
With the aftermarket employing approximately half of the entire automotive industry workforce in this country (over 388,000 people), AIA Canada and key industry stakeholders believe that the ALMI tool will make a significant impact in supporting access to functional and timely labour market information for the industry and will be essential for for industry employees, employers, job seekers and students.
