Demand for Skills in Canada : The Role of Foreign Outsourcing and Information-Communication Technology

One of the defining features of the Canadian Economy in the last two decades has been an increasing wage gap between the more skilled and the less skilled workers. Over the same period, there have been dramatic increases in expenditures on information and communication technologies (ICT) and in purchases of foreign intermediate inputs. This raises an obvious and important question: what is the role of ICT and foreign outsourcing in the increased demand for skilled workers‘ Using 84 Canadian manufacturing industries over 1981–96, we find that both ICT and foreign outsourcing are important contributors to the demand for skills