This report is a follow up to our 2019 Diversity report, and the 2020 paper on women’s participation in the automotive sector in the post-COVID era.

This paper provides an update on diversity and the labour force in Canada’s automotive industry based on the latest labour market data for four equity-serving groups (EDGs) – women, indigenous persons, persons with disabilities, and racialised persons. This paper focuses on industries with NAICs codes 3363 (motor vehicle manufacturing) and 3361 (motor vehicle parts manufacturing employees) within the context of the broader manufacturing and general Canadian labour force. The difference between this paper and others, is the inclusion of persons with disabilities. In addition, we look at sectoral employment data in the automotive supply chain. We make several observations based on this analysis.

• Women continue to be under-represented in Canada’s automotive industry (20% in assembly and 27% in parts production) and tend to be concentrated in lower-paying occupations. However, over the period 2010 to 2022, the percentage of women in parts production did increase by 20.1%, and by 45.8% in assembly; while overall manufacturing had a 4% increase.
• Women also face gender pay gaps, but assembly has much better pay equity than parts production or the general manufacturing labour force. Recruiting women into higher paying occupations and paying them equitably within the same occupations based on education, skills and performance, will help in reducing these pay gaps.
• Racialised persons are well represented in the auto workforce, accounting for 26% in assembly, representative of the Canadian labour force and a much higher proportion in parts production at 42.3%.
• A large proportion of racialised persons had a university certificate, diploma or bachelor degree, 33% in assembly and 29% in parts production, but this is slightly lower than the manufacturing sector, overall (36.7%).
• 87.8% of persons with permanent ability (PPDs) in the labour force in assembly are employed and 79.3% in parts production, but this is lower than manufacturing overall at 91.4%.
• 8% of all employed in assembly and in parts production are persons with permanent disabilities (PPDs), the same as manufacturing overall (8%), but slightly lower than the overall economy (10%).
• Indigenous Peoples employed in assembly (2.7%) and parts production (2%) are below the national share of 3.9%. This is related to the location of employers versus the location of indigenous persons. However, the expansion of mining for production of EV batteries will provide more job opportunities in the supply chain.