Welcome to the WEdata Sector Blog Series where we review the supply and demand of labour for each of the region’s top sectors of employment. To read more blogs like this, visit www.workforcewindsoressex.com/sectors.
ABOUT THE ADMINISTRATION & SUPPORT SERVICES, OTHER SERVICES, AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SECTORS IN WINDSOR-ESSEX
The three sectors of Administration & Support, Waste Management and Remediation Services (NAICS #56), Other Services (except Public Administration) (NAICS #81), and Public Administration (NAICS#91) together account for 3,485 business or 10.5% of businesses in the region. Other Services has the most businesses with 2,334 employing 7,405 workers, followed by Administration & Support with 1,132 employing 6,330, and then Public Administration with 19 organisation employing 6,905 workers. These three sectors employ approximately 20,640 workers or 11.5% of the total workforce in Windsor-Essex.
Organization Size: Fifty-seven percent (57%) of businesses in these three sectors are owner-operated with no employees. Of the 1,505 with employees, 78% are very small with 1-9 employees, another 20% have 10-199 workers, and 15 employers have a workforce of over 200 workers.
Demographics: The female to male gender ratio is about 3 : 7 amongst workers in the Administration & Support, with more males in Security, Facilities Support, and Waste Management and more females in Office and Travel support services. There is gender parity across the Other Services sector, but disparities exist within sub-sectors with more males in Repair and more females in Personal & Laundry services. In these two sectors, there are more female workers who are self-employed and more unpaid family workers. Public Administration, has slightly more male workers (53%) than females (47%), and there is no data on self-employed workers or unpaid family workers in this sector.
Public Administration and Other Services have the older workforces with about 50% over 45 years old, compared to Administration & Support with under 40%. About 20% of all three sectors’ workforce is over 55 years old.
Work Activity and Income: The median income for full-year, full-time workers in Public Administration is $74.6K, which is well above the national median income of $36.5K. However, full year, full-time workers in the other two sectors earn less: Other Services earn $36.6K, and Administration & Support earn $32.8K. Overall, workers in Public Administration earn substantially more as full-year, part-time and part-year, part-time and full-time workers than workers with the same level of work activity in the other two sectors.
Education and Income: Close to 80% of Public Administration workers, 70% of Other Service workers, and about 50% of Administration & Support workers have post-secondary education, including apprenticeship, college, and university qualifications. In all three sectors, those with post-secondary qualifications earned more than those with high school or less than high school qualifications. Retirement: National projected Sector Retirement rates to the year 2026 range from a low of 3.7 in Public Administration, to 4.3% in Administration and Support, to a very high rate of more than 12% in Other Services (not including Public Administration). This last sector is a big employer, so this rate is projected to equal about 350 yearly retirements for the next 7 years. Projected Occupational Retirement rates in these sectors range from slightly higher than the national rate of 2% in Other Services and Administration & Support to over 4% for Public Administration management positions. According to the Canadian Occupational Projection System (COPS) data the national median retirement age for workers in these sectors ranges between 61-63 years of age.
Education and Training: The Enrollment by Institution page shows how many students are enrolled in post-secondary programs at colleges and universities across Ontario. Organisations and businesses can search for the programs and institutions that they recruit and hire graduates from to see recent enrollment numbers for specific programs and institutions. Many employers are concerned about the supply of skilled workers for their industry. Those businesses that want to attract the best and brightest talent are wise to be proactive and build relationships with education and training institutions and their instructors. Going even further to develop onsite opportunities for cooperative education and internship placements for students also gives employers an opportunity to test-drive potential employees. Everyone benefits. Local consultations with employers in this sector show that there is a desire for more training in soft-skills. Graduate candidates are well qualified for jobs in this sector, but often do not possess interpersonal or communication skills that are considered very important in this sector.
Automation: These projections indicate how much of a given occupation’s work activities could be automated. They reflect automation predictions that routine activities, such as predictable physical work and processing and collecting data, are more susceptible to automation, while those at low risk involve managing people and complex tasks employing expertise. The probability of automation is highest for technicians and cleaners in these sectors and lowest for those in supervisory and professional occupations as well as those that provide one-on-one services, such as hairdressers and barbers.
While automation may lead to some job losses and task restructuring, it is important to keep in mind that the Talented Mr. Robot report and others have concluded that in actuality less than 5% of occupations could be completely automated. The authors suggest that mitigating the potential negative effects will take collaboration between all sectors to increase understanding of the implications, identify local technological strengths and opportunities, and provide education and training to those whose jobs will be impacted. They also acknowledge that automation in sectors is likely to be slower than initial predictions for multiple reasons, including as prohibitive costs, some technological advances are not occurring as quickly as predicted, and people’s preference that humans rather than machines to perform certain tasks. Local employers have stated that they do expect some automation in this sector. Automation is expected in more administrative tasks, such as bookkeeping, data collection, and management of databases.
These sectors will benefit from the spin-off jobs created by the large workforce for the Gordie Howe International Bridge project, which promises to create thousands of local construction, operations, and spin-off jobs in the next 30 years. Local consultations have shown that employers in this sector are positive in the sense that they believe the sector is going to grow in the future due to an increased need of services for individuals in Windsor-Essex, along with the fact that many new businesses have recently opened up in our region. These types of services will also be driven by unemployment.
