On February 25, 2020, Tony Bonen spoke to students at Carleton University about the importance of labour economics, working as an economist, and his career journey leading to LMIC.

1. LABOUR MARKET INFORMATION COUNCIL
CONSEIL DE L’INFORMATION SUR LE MARCHÉ DU TRAVAIL
Carleton University
25 February 2019
Tony Bonen (tony.bonen@lmic-cimt.ca)
Director, Research, Data and Analytics
Toward being a Professional Economist
(or something else, that’s also totally fine)

2. • Me, Me, Me
• Labour economics at LMIC
• What’s LMIC doing
• What should you do? (spoiler: I don’t know)
Outline

3. My pathway
Carleton University
• BA: Political Science & Economics
• Variety of jobs
University of Kent, Brussels
• MA: International Political Economy
• Research gigs
New School for Social
Research (NSSR)
• PhD: Economics
• RA in Labour Econ, Macro
• Teaching work, etc.
Canada Mortgage and
Housing Corporation (CMHC)
• Developed forecast models for
stress testing
• Applied econometrics research
• Research on housing market drivers
Labour Market Information
Council (LMIC)
• Public-facing research
• Data work
• Teaching and leading team of
economists
data data
data
data
data

4. Things I learned along the way
• Usually better if you decide what you want to do earlier, but you have lots
of time to figure it out later too
• If you like working with data/numbers, keep at it (in school and work)
• If you like working with data/numbers, learn to write (well)
• To the extent you’re able, work while studying
• PhDs are not for everyone, but a few years of doctoral work can go a long
way (even if you don’t finish)

5. Why economics
• A bridge between technical and non-technical disciplines
• Closely connected to the world of policy and politics
• Lots of career paths available (including scaling up/down intensity
of data work)
• Labour Economics:
• Very relevant because of applied empirical work
• Exposure to lots of different data types and use cases

6. To empower Canadians
including employers, workers, job seekers, academics, policy makers,
educators, career practitioners, students, parents and under-
represented groups
with timely and reliable labour market information and insights in
an engaging way that supports their decision-making process
Mission of LMIC
https://lmic-cimt.ca/

7. Strategic goals
COLLECT ANALYZE DISTRIBUTE
Gather and improve the
availability of relevant LMI
Undertake insightful and high-
quality analyses of LMI
Provide Canadians with timely,
relevant and reliable LMI

8. Putting the Labour (economics) in LMIC
What?
Career
decisions
How LMI is
consumed
How career
decisions are
made
❶ Why?❷
Data Needs
• Type (e.g., wages)
• Structure (e.g., take-home pay
vs. annual gross salary or hourly
wages)
Best practices
• Distributing LMI (e.g., what is
best form of dissemination,
frequency, etc.)
How?❸
Qualitative research
Literature
review
International
experiences
Test 1 use case
Repeat & expand

9. LMIC as a Data Hub
Flows to
Intermediaries End Users
Job
outlooks
Current College/
University students
Industry/sector
Statistics Canada
F/P/T (admin data,
occupational
outlook, etc.)
Other, e.g. private
sources
New LMI
Other data
Salaries by
field of
study
Skills in
demand
LMIC
Intermediary:
Education/
Career choice
API
Intermediary:
Investment
decision
Restructure
data
Partnerships to
generate new
LMI
Other LMI
Sources
Other
non-LMI
Sources

10. Other things LMIC is doing
• Surveys and focus groups about different groups’ LMI needs and challenges
https://lmic-cimt.ca/public-opinion-research-project/
• Bringing clarity to LMI concepts:
• Disentangling “labour shortages”, “skills shortages”, and “skills mismatches”
• How to identify and measure skills and the challenge of measuring skills shortages
• “Work Words”: an online dictionary of labour market term
https://lmic-cimt.ca/publications/lmi-insights/
• Research with new administrative datasets: ELMLP
https://lmic-cimt.ca/projects/studentoutcomes/

11. Student Earnings Dashboard (2010 grads’ earnings)
Send us your
feedback:
info@lmic-cimt.ca

12. What should you do?
• Finish your Bachelor’s
• If you want to work as an economist:
• Get ready to do a Master’s
• Challenge yourself to learn new programs (R, Python, Julia, Matlab, etc.)
• Take classes that make you write (and take the feedback seriously)
• Think about the type of environment you want to be in:
• Job security?
• Making lots of money?
• Self-directed research?
• Being part of a movement?

13. Questions?
For additional information visit our
website lmic-cimt.ca