The Alberta Centre for Labour Market Research is the premier destination for Canadian labour market expertise and an essential Canadian destination for unbiased, high-quality labour market information and research.
Our organization represents a collective of Alberta based researchers, including from four comprehensive academic and research universities, with our research aggregated and efficiently disseminated through the ACLMR. Our research is positioned to help inform provincial, regional, and federal labour market policies.
ACLMR is a place where any interested party, be it a researcher, policy maker, business owner, or labour organizer, can find the best research and/or researcher that fits their needs.
The Increasing Importance of Alberta Labour Market Information
Labour markets involve the direct interactions between individuals as workers (who supply their labour) and firms as employers (who demand their labour), with indirect roles for multiple levels of government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and unions, helping to regulate and shape how these interactions take place. Thus, each of the parties directly or indirectly involved relies on access to high quality labour market information to make evidence-based decisions.
In an Alberta context, the cyclical nature of the provincial economy, coupled with vulnerability to exogenous shocks, means that the province faces a number of consistent and/or recurring challenges in terms of labour. These challenges include dynamics on both the supply and demand side, and are compounded by a number of related issues, including historical patterns of employment and compensation that are less and less applicable, challenges with the development and retention of skilled labour (geographically, temporally, and sectorally), demographic changes that correspond to gaps in labour supply, as noted by Howery 2019, the significant economic presence of the energy sector, coupled with an increasing impact of technology and automation, as well as increasing variation in both the nature of work, and the expectations/experiences of those engaged in the workforce.
The above factors demand stakeholders ranging from policymakers to employers have access to highquality real-time labour market information. However, today, access to public information on labour markets is often not readily available or of good enough quantity and quality to guide the best decisions. This information can also be clouded by the competing biases of some of the parties involved, looking to extend their influence by exhausting resources to actively advocate on their own behalf. For example, some firms may have monopsony (or buying of labour) power over workers and some unions may have monopoly (or selling of labour) power over firms, so they may flood the public with misleading information, making it difficult to gauge what is true. When such misinformation or disinformation is further tied to specific ideologies and gathered without the necessary training to understand and properly explain the observed outcomes, the situation becomes more problematic.
The Role of the Alberta Centre for Labour Market Research
Our solution is the establishment of the Alberta Centre for Labour Market Research. Through our Centre, labour researchers housed across all four comprehensive academic and research universities (CARUs), policy researchers (e.g., economic development agencies), and industry researchers (e.g., industry and professional associations) will have efficient access to the leading labour market research.
The centralizing and opening-up access to province-specific labour market research will contribute to enhance collaboration, agility, and the impact of outcomes. With greater collaboration and a more amplified voice, all parties involved in labour markets will benefit.
The ACLMR is hosted by the University of Alberta and is open to all researchers studying labour market dynamics in the province.
Our Goals
- Deliver high-quality, rigorous, and unbiased research.
- Provide more efficient and targeted access to high quality labour market information.
- Enhance public engagement through greater outreach with the media and other channels of dissemination.
- An ability to inform policy at all levels of government, with proximity to the provincial government as an asset.
- Proven capacity to raise external funding from respected sources, with little stipulation as to the direction of our output.
- Deliver a program designed to expand Alberta expertise in labour market research.
