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Canadian Environmental Employment
Job posting trends (preliminary findings)
September 2017
Photo credit: Josh Calabrese
About ECO Canada
For over 20 years, we’ve studied the environmental labour market and
examined ways to improve access for new graduates as well as those
entering the industry mid-career.
The data we collect provides insights on environmental career trends,
from top jobs to skills gaps to high-growth sectors. Governments,
educators, youth and industry planners use our findings to make
decisions and formulate strategy.
Our research has also informed our development of the
Environmental Professional Certification (EP) ̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ an occupational
standard for skills and training ̶̶̶ as well as ongoing training and
professional development for Canada’s EPs.
September 2017 - preliminary
2
Introduction▪ Environmental employment is cross-sectoral (spread across
industries), and previously, environmental occupations could not be
organized into individual Statistics Canada National Occupational
Classifications (NOCs).
▪ Therefore, ECO Canada developed the National Occupational Standards
(NOS) for environmental work. The NOS have many applications,
including certifying qualified environmental workers with the
Environmental Professional certification.
▪ The development of these standards has enabled ECO to develop a
framework, whereby environmental work (NOS) falls into 3 sectors and
13 sub-sectors. For more information: http://www.eco.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2016-NOS-for-Environmental-Professionals.pdf. This
ECO Canada Sector Model, is a useful tool for classifying environmental
jobs, goods, services and technologies that contribute to environmental
protection, resource management and sustainability in Canada.
▪ To gather its labour market information, ECO Canada has primarily
used employer surveys, which represent point-in-time information and
are costly to implement.
A: Environmental Protection
• Air Quality• Water Quality• Site Assessment and
Reclamation• Waste Management• Environmental Health
and Safety
B: Resource Management
• Energy (Efficiency and Renewables)
• Natural Resource Management
• Fisheries and Wildlife Management
C: Sustainability
• Policy and Legislation• Sustainability• Research and
Development• Education and training• Communications and
Public Awareness
3
September 2017 - preliminary
IntroductionECO Canada is moving away from large multifaceted surveys as its primary source of labour market
information and is examining new ways of measuring environmental employment. The following report
is one of a suite of four preliminary reports:
▪ Canadian Environmental Employment: Summary Analysis
▪ This report introduces some new concepts and ways of exploring trends in environmental employment. It
summarizes the major findings of the following three, more detailed reports.
▪ Canadian Environmental Employment: Job Posting Trends
▪ This report looks at how job posting analysis can be useful in looking at hiring trends and presents some
findings for environmental employment.
▪ Canadian Environmental Employment: Supply and Demand
▪ ECO Canada has begun work on a supply-demand model, and this report presents some early findings.
▪ Canadian Environmental Employment: Environmental Goods and Services
▪ This report analyses data from UK-company kMatrix and presents major findings on market size and
employment. It also looks at the contribution of each ECO Canada sub-sector to Canada’s GDP.
September 2017 - preliminary
4
Introduction
B: Resource Management
• Energy (Efficiency and Renewables)
• Natural Resource Management
• Fisheries and Wildlife Management
In 2012, ECO Canada began using Job Posting Analysis (JPA) for
estimating the size of the core environmental workers in
Canada (workers who have at least one of ECO Canada’s NOS)
and mapping them to the NOC code (because each job posting
is related to a NOC code).
Now that a form of NOS▪ -NOC mapping can be obtained ECO
Canada is using the JPA to feed into a Labour Market
Modelling System that will provide a more comprehensive
picture of supply and demand for the environmental
workforce.
This report focuses on job postings and provides an analysis ▪
of trends for the environmental sector and for ECO
Canada’s sub-sectors. A separate report on environmental
supply and demand will accompany this report in
September 2017.
September 2017 - preliminary
5
WHAT IS JOB
POSTING ANALYSIS?
What Is Job Posting Analysis?
▪ Spiders or bots crawl across the web and collect job ad information. This process
usually follows a fixed schedule, spidering a predetermined bucket of websites.
▪ Once the data is located, they are extracted and coded into specific elements. The
focus is on the context and sentence structure to determine the form, subject and
meaning of each job ad.
▪ Algorithms that identify environmental employment, environmental sub-sectors and
environmental National Occupational Standards (NOS) are applied to the job ad
database. Jobs that match these criteria are tagged and summarized into a quarterly
time series.
▪ From here, we can analyze some environmental trends in job advertisements.
September 2017 - preliminary
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WHY IS JOB POSTING
DATA USEFUL?
Why Is Job Posting Data Useful?
Good for job seekers
▪ Good source of information on skills in demand and
companies that are hiring.
Good for policymakers
▪ Real-time data that enables early detection of labour demand trends.
Good for researchers
▪ Only way to link environmental jobs to the existing NOC codes.
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9
Challenges with Job Scraping▪ Not all jobs are advertised, and not all job ads are fully translated into jobs. Job ads do, however, serve as a
leading indicator of ensuing hiring trends, and it is possible to discern relationships between the number
of jobs ads compared to the actual number of hires.
▪ The common practice of posting the same job ads on multiple websites can lead to considerable over-
estimation of job ads. (The process to identify and remove duplicate jobs as is known as deduplication).
For this reason, it is important to impose time frames. ECO Canada considers that after 60 days, the same
job ad is considered to be new.
▪ Job ads collected every quarter can be irregular due to the following reasons:
• Seasonality: Q1 and Q2 typically have higher number of job ads, while Q4 is typically the lowest
• Sources: More sources (employer websites/aggregators) are added each quarter to increase the number of job ads collected
• Spidering technology: Some job aggregators try to prevent bots from scraping their website, leading to a drop in collected job ads
▪ In order to overcome variations in the data attributed to data collection difficulties, the proportion of environmental job ads compared to total job ads is used for trend analysis.
September 2017 - preliminary
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WHAT WE DID
What We Did
▪ Job ad data is provided by Burning Glass Technologies, an online job ads aggregator, and
analyzed and tagged by Field Guide Consulting to identify environmental job ads.
▪ Between Q1 2013 and Q4 2016, a large subset of online job postings were scraped and
analysed to see if they required environmental skills (competencies as defined by ECO
Canada).
▪ Those postings were further analysed to classify them according to the NOC and ECO
Canada subsector. Matching is done at 1, 2 and 3-digit NOC levels to make sure all
environmental jobs are scraped.
▪ The data presented here was recorded on a national level by quarter.
September 2017 - preliminary
12
ENVIRONMENT SECTOR TRENDS
Total vs Environmental Canadian Job Ads, Annual
▪ Data collection started in 2013, so as more
sources (employer website/ aggregators)
were added, an increase in job ad
numbers was seen between 2013 and
2014.
▪ Total job ads peaked in 2014 at 1.3
million and dropped to 1 million by 2016
as economy slowed down in 2015/2016.
▪ Environmental job ads mirrored total job
ads in that they peaked in 2014 with
nearly 29,000 environmental job
postings and dropped to nearly 21,000 in
2016.
815,027
1,302,753
1,116,5991,070,706
22,659 29,074 23,302 20,931
0
200,000
400,000
600,000
800,000
1,000,000
1,200,000
1,400,000
2013 (pilot year) 2014 2015 2016
Nu
mb
er
of
tota
l jo
b a
ds
Job ads
All job ads Environmental job adsPilot year all job ads
September 2017 - preliminary
14
Environmental Job Ads, Quarterly
▪ Q2 and Q3 2014 experienced
the highest number of postings
for environmental jobs at
nearly 8,500 and 8,000
respectively.
Quarterly, the number of job ads ▪
appears to be quite erratic, and
more data needs to be gathered
for trends; however, we can see
that Q3 has the highest number
of job postings in 3 out of the 4
years shown, and Q4 2016 is the
only year to see fewer than 5,000
job postings.
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
7,000
8,000
9,000
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
2013 (pilot year) 2014 2015 2016
Nu
mb
er
of
en
viro
nm
en
t jo
b a
ds
Number of environmental job ads
2013 (pilot year) Q1 2013 (pilot year) Q2 2013 (pilot year) Q3 2013 (pilot year) Q4
September 2017 - preliminary
15
Proportion of Canadian Environmental Job Ads
▪ The proportion of environmental job ads is defined as the percentage of total job ads that require environmental competencies.
▪ The environmental sector in this report refers to the total number of job ads that contained at least one environmental competency.
September 2017 - preliminary
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Proportion of Canadian Environmental Jobs▪ Q1 saw the highest proportion of
environmental job ads in each of the
years presented.
▪ Q3 saw the lowest proportion of
environmental job ads in each of the
years presented.
▪ The highest environmental proportion
(2.9%) was experienced in 2013,
which was the pilot year and before
commodity prices collapsed.
▪ Even though Q2 and Q3 2014 had the
highest number of environmental job
postings, the proportion of job ads,
compared to total job ads was among
the lowest.
2.9%
2.7%
2.8%
1.9%
2.5%
1.9%
2.2%
1.7%
0.0%
0.5%
1.0%
1.5%
2.0%
2.5%
3.0%
3.5%
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
2013 2014 2015 2016In
cid
en
ce C
om
par
ed
to
All
Job
s
Environmental Sector - Job Posting Proportion
September 2017 - preliminary
17
Top 10 NOCs in the Environmental Sector (Share)
▪ The top 10 NOCs in terms
of share of job ads remain
consistent over the 4 years
with only one difference in
2014. Agriculture and
horticulture workers
steadily increase in share to
become the top ranked
NOC by 2016, followed by
other technical inspectors
and regulatory officers, and
civil, mechanical, electrical
and chemical engineers.
▪ The 10 NOCs make up
approximately 60% of the
total sector.4%
0%
10%
0%
15%
0%
15%13%
0%
10%
0%
9%
0%
9%3%
0%
3%
0%
3%
0%
3%4%
0%
3%
0%
3%
0%
3%4%
0%
4%
0%
4%
0%
4%5%
0%
4%
0%
4%
0%
3%4%
0%
3%
0%
3%
0%
2%7%
0%
6%
0%
6%
0%
5%
13%
0%
15%
0%
14%
0%
12%
3%0%
0%
2%
0%
2%
2 0 1 3 2 0 1 4 2 0 1 5 2016
Legislators and seniormanagement
Human resources and businessservice professionals
Other technical inspectors andregulatory officers
Managers in financial andbusiness services
Managers in engineering,architecture, science andinformation systems
Other engineers
Life science professionals
Computer and informationsystems professionals
Cleaners
Civil, mechanical, electrical andchemical engineers
Agriculture and horticultureworkers
Top 10 NOCs and Share of Environmental Sector
59% or 13,422
environmental job ads
60% or 17,465
environmental job ads
61% or 15,215
environmental job ads
60% or 12,622
environmental job ads
September 2017 - preliminary
18
Top 3 NOCs in the Environmental Sector▪ Discounting the pilot year, three NOCs have consistently maintained the top-three
largest shares of the environmental job ads.
▪ Agriculture and horticulture workers is the only NOC to consistently increase its share of
the sector over the four years of job ads.
2013 2014 2015 2016
Rank NOC Share NOC Share NOC Share NOC Share
1
(NOC 213) Civil, mechanical, electrical and chemical engineers
12.9%
(NOC 226) Other technical inspectors and regulatory officers
15.0%
(NOC 843) Agriculture and horticulture workers
15.0%(NOC 843) Agriculture and horticulture workers
15.4%
2
(NOC 226) Other technical inspectors and regulatory officers
12.9%
(NOC 843) Agriculture and horticulture workers
10.2%
(NOC 226) Other technical inspectors and regulatory officers
13.7%
(NOC 226) Other technical inspectors and regulatory officers
12.5%
3
(NOC 012) Managers in financial and business services
7.0%
(NOC 213) Civil, mechanical, electrical and chemical engineers
9.8%
(NOC 213) Civil, mechanical, electrical and chemical engineers
8.8%
(NOC 213) Civil, mechanical, electrical and chemical engineers
8.6%
September 2017 - preliminary
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Environmental Sector Summary
September 2017 - preliminary
20
All job ads peaked in 2014 at 1.3 million and dropped to 1 million in 2016 12 Environmental job ads also peaked in 2014 at 30,000 dropped to 21,000 by 2016.
4Agriculture and horticulture workers, Other technical inspectors and
regulatory officers, and Civil, mechanical, electrical and chemical
engineers were consistently in the top 3 NOCs form 2014 to 2016.
3 Q1 consistently saw the highest proportion of environmental jobs and Q3
saw the lowest.
SUB-SECTOR TRENDS
Sub-sector Trends▪ From 2014-2016, Natural
Resource Management has
the highest number of job
ads, followed by
environmental health and
safety.
▪ NOCs, such as agriculture and
horticulture, that have a high
number of job ads within
these larger sub-sectors
exhibited a large share of the
environment sector as a
whole.
▪ The sub-sector with the
lowest number of job ads is
Fisheries and Wildlife
Management.
NOTE: The sum of job ads by sub-sector may or may not match the total for the environmental sector since there can be a single job ad that is mapped to in multiple sub-sectors.
22
5,009 8,138 7,587 7,048
5,119
6,881 4,811
4,517
3,098
4,017
3,440 3,461
3,635
4,059
3,196 2,792
3,375
3,417
2,476 2,411
1,434
1,942
1,708 1,497
1,839
1,806
1,484 1,313
1,368
1,763
1,303
1,266
1,294
1,632
1,202
1,263
1,241
1,396
1,315
966
1,388
1,437
1,089
967
1,062
1,127
933
885
1,014
994
753
839
773
1,077
782
747
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
35,000
40,000
2013 (pilot year) 2014 2015 2016
Number of job advertisements by ECO sub-sector
Fisheries and Wildlife Management
Air Quality
Energy - Renewables
Site Assessment and Reclamation
Education and Training
Policy and legislation
Communications and public Awareness
Research and Development
Sustainability
Energy - Efficiency
Water Quality
Waste Management
Environmental Health and Safety
Natural Resource Management
Sub-sector Trends – Environmental Protection
▪ Within the Environmental
Protection Sector, Environmental
Health and Safety has the
highest proportion of
environmental job ads, followed
by Waste Management and Water
Quality.
▪ Waste Management is the only
sub-sector to experience a higher
environmental percentage at the
end of the analysis period (Q4
2016) than at the beginning.
▪ However, all sub-sectors in
Environmental Protection started
to recover in Q4 2016 as economy
began to improve.
0.0%
0.1%
0.2%
0.3%
0.4%
0.5%
0.6%
0.7%
0.8%
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
2013 2014 2015 2016
Air Quality Water Quality
Site Assessment and Reclamation Waste Management
Environmental Health and Safety
Environmental Protection sub-sector job ads as percentage of all job ads
September 2017 - preliminary
23
Sub-sector Trends – Environmental Protection
Air Quality Water QualitySite Assessment and
Reclamation Waste Management
Environmental Health
and Safety
2013 2014 2015 2016 2013 2014 2015 2016 2013 2014 2015 2016 2013 2014 2015 2016 2013 2014 2015 2016
Civil, mechanical, electrical
and chemical engineersP P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P
Life science professionals P P P P P P
Managers in financial and
business servicesP P P P P P P P P
Other engineers P P P
Managers in engineering,
architecture, science and
information systems
P
Longshore workers and
material handlersP P P
Motor vehicle and transit
driversP P P P
Cleaners P
Utilities equipment operators
and controllersP P P P
Harvesting, landscaping and
natural resources labourersP P
Plumbers, pipefitters and gas
fittersP
Sales and account
representatives - wholesale
trade (non-technical)
P
Other technical inspectors
and regulatory officersP P P P P P P P
Table of top 3 NOCs with the highest number of jobs in each sub-sector by year
▪ Civil, mechanical,
electrical and chemical
engineers appear at
some point in the top
3 NOCs for all
Environmental
Protection sub-
sectors.
▪ Site Assessment and
Reclamation has the
most consistent top 3
NOCs over the four
years.
24
Sub-sector Trends –Resource Management
▪ Among the Resource Management
sector, Natural Resource
Management has the largest
proportion of environmental jobs,
followed by Energy - Efficiency.
▪ All sub-sectors recovered somewhat
in Q4 2016 except Fisheries and
Wildlife Management. The price of
fish continued to drop in 2016,
partially accounting for lower
industry investment.0.0%
0.1%
0.2%
0.3%
0.4%
0.5%
0.6%
0.7%
0.8%
0.9%
1.0%
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
2013 2014 2015 2016
Natural resource management Energy - efficiency
Energy - renewables Fisheries and wildlife management
Resource management sub-sector job ads as percentage of all job ads
September 2017 - preliminary
25
Sub-sector Trends – Resource Management
▪ Agriculture is the top NOC for
all 4 years in NRM, the largest
sub-sector.
▪ Civil, mechanical, electrical
and chemical engineers are in
the top 3 NOCs for all Resource
Management sub-sectors except
FWM where life sciences are by
far the most prevalent NOC.
Natural Resource
Management (NRM)Energy – Efficiency Energy – Renewables
Fisheries and Wildlife
Management (FWM)
2013 2014 2015 2016 2013 2014 2015 2016 2013 2014 2015 2016 2013 2014 2015 2016
Agriculture and
horticulture workersP P P P
Civil, mechanical,
electrical and chemical
engineers
P P P P P P P P P P P P
Life science
professionalsP P P P P P P P P
Managers in financial
and business servicesP P P P P P P P P
Other engineers P
Technical occupations
in life sciencesP P P P
Computer and
information systems
professionals
P P P P P
Corporate sales
managersP
Managers in
agriculture,
horticulture and
aquaculture
P P P
Table of top 3 NOCs with the highest number of jobs in each sub-sector by year
26
Sub-sector Trends - Sustainability
▪ The sub-sectors in this category move
in tandem. Most of the jobs in
environmental Sustainability include a
combination of education, research,
policy/legislation and communications
skill requirements.
▪ The spike in Q1 2015 is mainly due to
recovery in energy prices in Q1 2015
that could not be sustained after oil
prices dropped for the rest of 2015
and into 2016.
▪ All sub-sectors recovered somewhat in
Q4 2016, however education and
training did not rebound to the same
level. It is not uncommon for training
to experience a lag, even as the
economy recovers.
September 2017 - preliminary
27
0.0%
0.1%
0.2%
0.3%
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
2013 2014 2015 2016
Research and Development Communications and Public Awareness
Sustainability Policy and Legislation
Education and Training
Sustainability sub-sector job ads as percentage of all job ads
Sub-sector Trends - Sustainability
Policy and Legislation Sustainability Education and TrainingResearch and
Development
Communications and
Public Awareness
2013 2014 2015 2016 2013 2014 2015 2016 2013 2014 2015 2016 2013 2014 2015 2016 2013 2014 2015 2016
Civil, mechanical,
electrical and chemical
engineers
P P P P P P P P P P P P P
Life science
professionalsP P P P P P P P
Managers in financial
and business servicesP P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P
Legislators and senior
managementP
Policy and program
researchers,
consultants and officers
P P P P P P P
Physical science
professionalsP
University professors
and post-secondary
assistants
P P P P
Judges, lawyers and
Quebec notariesP P
Other technical
inspectors and
regulatory officers
P P P P P
Table of top 3 NOCs with the highest number of jobs in each sub-sector by year
▪ Managers in
financial and
business services
are in the top 3
NOCs for all
Sustainability sub-
sectors, and Civil,
mechanical
engineers etc. are
once again in the
top 3 for almost all
the sub-sectors.
28
Sub-sector Summary
September 2017 - preliminary
29
Natural Resource Management had the largest proportion of environmental job ads among all ECO
Canada’s sub-sectors1
2Within NRM, agriculture and horticulture had the highest number of job ads (more than 3,000
in 2016), highlighting the need for workers in this field.
4 Research and Development had the fewest number of NOCs.
3 Waste Management had the highest number of NOCs.
5Civil, mechanical, electrical and chemical engineers were in the top 3
NOCs in 12 out of 14 sub-sectors (the most of any NOC), suggesting
the most transferability between sub-sectors is in this NOC.
Conclusion ▪ Overall environmental job ads increased from 2013 to 2014, but dropped considerably in
2015/2016.
Outlook is promising
▪ Q1 2016 was the bottom for commodity prices, and job ads data for most of sub-sectors have
picked up in last quarter of 2016.
▪ Federal government supports clean technology and desires to address climate change and
pollution.
▪ Canada’s job creation in the first half of 2017 has been strong, including the latest increase in
June according to the Conference Board of Canada. The labour market momentum aligns with
other indicators suggesting that the Canadian economy grew by close to 3% in the 2nd quarter.
September 2017 - preliminary
30