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.

The people of Ottawa are the secret to its success. They are a prosperous population with a per capita income that is among the highest in Canada. They are also 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.

The Ottawa-Gatineau unemployment rate is currently 4.8 per cent (Source: Statistics Canada, September 2006) although the annual forecast for 2006 is 6.6 per cent. There has been a gradual decrease in unemployment over the last three years, which is expected to continue as Ottawa’s total employment continues to increase.

The workforce is very educated with more than 50 per cent of Ottawa’s population having some form of university education, and over 65 per cent of the population has post secondary education.

Ottawa’s workforce also has a diverse skill set. The public administration has the highest level of experienced labour force over 15 years, with the professional, scientific and technical labour force as the second largest group according to Statistics Canada’s,  2001 Census.

Ottawa-Gatineau has the second largest concentration of science and engineering employment out of 316 North American cities, surpassed only by San Jose. One in nine employees is a scientist or engineer.

The average employment income across all industries in 2001 was $39,713.

Although Ottawa’s high tech sector employment figures suffered a downturn in 2003, the industry has come back very strong and is currently employing over 79,000 people.