Source: An Amazing Statscan Skills Study | HESA
An interesting post from our friends at Higher Education Strategy Associates, summarizing a Statistics Canada study on employment skills requirements. A couple of graphs are reproduced below, and follow the link above for more details, but here’s a quick take-away from my perspective.
- Different job categories require different levels of reading comprehension and writing skills.
- Architecture, engineering and related occupations require the highest levels of reading comprehension and writing skills (the red striped bars in the graphs below).
- That’s why in engineering admissions and education we’re interested and concerned about reading, writing and communications skills. There is still lots of room for improvement in our curricula, but it’s an ongoing effort.
- Not surprisingly, architecture and engineering also require the highest levels of complex problem solving skills.
A Professor in Waterloo Engineering 
There seems to be a large gap between the first and second place – what a statistic!