A new report is putting hard numbers on Ontario's future workforce needs, projecting that more than a million university graduates will be required in the province between now and 2035. The study was commissioned by the Council of Ontario Universities and carried out by the firm Stokes Economics, which set out to map where the demand for highly educated workers is heading over the next decade.
According to the findings, the largest single share of that demand sits in science and technology. The report estimates that 21 percent of the jobs in question fall within STEM fields, with health sciences ranking next, including roles for doctors and nurses. Together, those two areas are expected to drive much of the appetite for university graduates in the years ahead.
The signs of that shift are already visible in classrooms aimed at the youngest learners. At one after-school program, robots are part of the lessons for children as young as seven, and the owner is not surprised that science and technology jobs are expected to be among the most in demand. Robotics, they note, runs from hardcore programming all the way through to designing, building, manufacturing and the maintenance jobs that follow.
The pull of technology is not limited to engineers and programmers. Even students heading into fields such as psychology will need to work with data, and with artificial intelligence set to be integrated into nearly everything, it is becoming hard to imagine a future career that does not require some grounding in computer studies. That broadening demand is part of what the report is trying to capture.
For the Council of Ontario Universities, the central message is about how the government should spend limited money. The council's president argued that the government has scarce resources and cannot invest in everything, so when scarce dollars go into the system, they should be placed where they will have the biggest economic impact. That, the council says, means high-demand programs that students want to enroll in and that businesses want more graduates from.
The province has already moved in that direction. Ontario recently added 1.7 billion dollars and wants to fund 70,000 more seats for in-demand programs, including STEM and health sciences. The investment is intended to expand capacity in exactly the areas the report flags as the most pressing for the labour market over the coming years.
On the ground, institutions are already feeling the strain of rising interest. At McMaster University, officials say thousands more people are applying to engineering compared with just a few years ago, and they are trying to meet the demand. One representative said colleagues in the nuclear industry regularly share workforce numbers that are a little terrifying, but the university is doing everything it can to help them meet their goals and requirements.