Ottawa’s workforce

Boasting the highest number of residents with a post-secondary education in Canada, a bilingual rate of 44 per cent, and more engineers, scientists and PhDs per capita than any other city in the country, the strength of Ottawa’s workforce has played a pivotal role in its emergence as a global technology centre. Our high percentage of English and French bilingualism, as well as our strengths in multiple international languages, are great assets for businesses that are looking to establish themselves in an area where a multilingual workforce is easily available to serve customers world wide.

The people of Ottawa are the secret to its success. They are youthful, entrepreneurial, highly-educated, and multilingual. In fact, cosmopolitan Ottawa prides itself on its ethnic diversity. The city continues to attract the best and brightest from all parts of the globe.

In recent years, Ottawa has recognized the importance of education in the world’s emerging knowledge economy. All sectors of the community have banded together to strengthen educational opportunities and interactions between academic institutions and businesses. The goal is to create a community that continually shapes its renewed workforce with learning opportunities that start at kindergarten and continue through post-secondary learning into the advancing careers of our workforce. To find out more about how Ottawa prepares its workforce, visit the “Learn in Ottawa” pages on this site.