Social Services Labour Market Research Project

BC’s social services sector has long experienced challenges with attracting and keeping staff. The sector is competing for workers in a tough labour market and the added complexity, skill, and personal connection required in this line of work only adds further challenges. Efforts to take a systems-level approach have been complicated by the lack of data about the sector. There have been several studies over the past 10 years that looked at various aspects of our field but none have been able to paint a full picture of the whole sector in comparison to others or of the labour market in general.

In 2018, The Federation began work (in partnership with SPARC BC and CSSEA) on an in-depth research study and analysis of BC’s community social services sector labour market. Funding for this project was provided through the Canada-British Columbia Labour Market Development Agreement’s Sector Labour Market Partnerships (SLMP) Program administered by the BC Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training (MAEST).

In February, 2021, we received approval and permission to release the Final Report of the Social Services Labour Market Research Project and the project’s Aggregated Data publicly.