Opportunities for Growth

• The year 2000 represents a banner year in terms of opportunities for growth for members of designated groups.
• In the private sector, there were close to 100,000 hiring opportunities, an increase of close to 30,000 over the previous year. Unfortunately, while registering a slight increase for aboriginal persons and visible minority groups, this sector experienced a slight decrease in overall representation for women and persons with disabilities.
• In the public sector, close to 16,000 job openings were filled, about 2,000 more than the previous year.Close to 3,500 were for permanent jobs. There are encouraging signs of progress for all four designated groups in this sector where they all received higher shares of hirings than in the previous year.

The four Designated Groups

WOMEN: Their representation and concurrent share of hires decreased by close to 1.0% in the private sector, to 43.9% against an overall availability of 46.4%. Conversely, the public service registered an increase in representation to 52.1%.

VISIBLE MINORITY GROUPS made progress on both fronts. In the private sector, their share of employment increased to 10.6%, in line with the 10.3% Census benchmark. Concurrently, in the public service, their representation rose from 5.5% in 1999 to 6.1%.

ABORIGINAL PERSONS: Their gains in the public sector are in sharp contrast to their lack of progress in the private sector, where their overall representation is at 1.6% gainst an availability of 2.1%. However, they experienced encouraging gains in the public sector where they are fully represented overall.

PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES suffered a decrease of 1% in the private sector, falling to a low of 2.3 % against a 6.5% availability. However, there are encouraging signs in the public sector , where their representation increased from 4.7% to 5.1%.