Some 21% of those with Level 3 prose skills were in jobs with low workplace reading-writing requirements (Table 2; Chart A). Fully half of those with the highest prose literacy scores (Level 4/5) were in the surplus category. Thus, in absolute numbers, about 2.5 million Canadians were in jobs that did not appear to take full advantage of their prose literacy skills. Literacy deficits reflect the other possible form of mismatch. However, with respect to prose literacy, this problem is not as widespread. In 1994, about 700,000 workers were in jobs with reading-writing demands that appeared to exceed their skills,² including 19% of those at Level 1 in prose literacy and 16% of those at Level 2 (Table 2; Chart B).

Regarding document literacy surplus, 23% of employed Canadians in Level 3 and 43% in Level 4/5 occupied jobs with low literacy requirements (Table 3; Chart A). Combined, this represents about 2.5 million individuals in jobs that did not seem to require their level of skill, a total similar to that observed for prose literacy. The pattern of document literacy deficit also paralleled the prose pattern, with around 15% in each of Levels 1 and 2 holding jobs that required literacy skills two or more levels higher (more than 600,000 in total).

Patterns of quantitative literacy versus workplace numeracy requirements were somewhat different (Table 4). The low skill-low requirement group was somewhat smaller (about 1.7 million) than those in the other scales (or domains), as was the medium-medium group. The latter included 43% of the employed with Level 2 quantitative skills and 35% of those in Level 3 (about 2.8 million people in total). In turn, the group in the skill surplus category was proportionally larger for those in Level 3 (30%), but somewhat smaller for Level 4/5 (38%; Chart A). Still, the absolute size of this group was similar, at around 2.5 million. In contrast, the group defined as having skill deficits (about 1.3 million; Chart B) and workers in the high skill-high requirement fit category (almost 3.5 million) represented larger proportions of the total employed labor force in 1994.

The proportions of Canadians employed in both medium-medium and high-high fit situations were larger for all three types of literacy than the proportion in low-low fit settings (Table 5). In fact, for quantitative literacy, the high-high category was the largest. Assuming that a high-skill economy (referring both to workers and their jobs) is preferable to lower-skill alternatives, these are encouraging results.