Economics Is Canada a Post-Industrial Society? There

Economics

Is Canada a Post-Industrial Society?

There is little doubt that the economy in Canada has changed; over the last decade there has been a general movement away from agricultural and industrial jobs towards jobs in the service sector. This is a trend which appears to indicate the country is moving towards, or has become, a post-industrial society. To determine if this is the case it is necessary to define what is meant by the term post industrial society, to identify the characteristics which are seen in a post industrial society. The characteristics may then provide a basis for assessment of Canada.

The concept of a post industrial society was first popularized by Harvard Sociologist Daniel Bell, in his book the coming of the Post Industrial Society, first published in 1973. Bell (1999) hypothesized a model of four stages of society that have, or were believed to be emerging; the four stages were pre-history, pre-industrial, industrial, and post indusial. The prehistory stage is usually referred to as the hunter gatherer stage (Bell, 1999). The preindustrial society sees the development of a rudimentary economy, where there is a heavy reliance on the primary sector, which is principally agriculture (Bell, 1999). The movement towards industrial society reflects increasing dominance of manufacturing industries, with dependency on the secondary activities associated with processing and value adding activities (Bell, 1999). The post-industrial society has a heavy reliance on tertiary production, where there is a movement away from the manufacturing of goods towards the service sector (Bell, 1999).

Bell (1999), perceived the transition from industrial to post-industrial facilitated by technology developing which would facilitate innovation and increased efficiency of manufacturing and production industries, which would result in reduction in the level of labor required for those industries to provide the equivalent levels of output. Concurrently there would be an increased valuation of knowledge and the knowledge industries, which would require increased levels of input labor in order to meet and increase demand. Krahn and Lowe (1998) argue that in a post-industrial society most of the workers would be employed in "the production and dissemination of knowledge, rather than in goods production"(p.24).

Bell also noted a number of other characteristics which would be associated with the shift away from manufacturing and towards services/knowledge. The transition would also involve a number of changes to social structures and political structures as well as economic and commercial structures. The post-industrial society receive the creation of new science-based industries with a pattern of convergence between abstract ideas and applied science, there would also be the creation of new intellectual technology with use of high level mathematics and algorithms which would be able to run simulations (Bell, 1999). The social structure would be influenced by the way in which access to property and education are accessed, during the industrial stage of development the main access to property would be through inheritance, but in the post-industrial society social mobility would be increased through increased access to education, and further requirements expansion of professional and technical jobs that required a higher level of educational background for participants in the new information technology environment (Bell, 1999). Bell (1999) also argued that there would be a shift from the perception of financial capital as being the predominant source of capital for society, and moved towards the concept of social capital. The main infrastructure supporting a society is also expected to shift in a post-industrial society, in industrial societies the dominant support was transportation, but in the post-industrial society it becomes communication, which is also interdependent with the shift towards services in the way in which information technology becomes increasingly utilized.

If assessing the position and progress of Canada, one can compare Canada with the different characteristics in order to determine whether it is industrial post-industrial country. There is little doubt there has been a significant shift in the economic base of the country, in 1926, approximately 35% of the population were employed in agricultural industries, and 65% employed in the non-agricultural sectors, combining manufacturing and services. By 1989 approximately 3% of the population remains in the agricultural sector, where in excess of 90% are in the non-agricultural sector (Rosenberg, 1992). During this period there was a shift of Labor into manufacturing, and then away from manufacturing into services, even in short period between 1970-1989 there was a move from 23% of the labor force participating in manufacturing sector that the 17% (Rosenberg, 1992). By 2006 only 2% of the workforce is employed in agriculture, 13% in manufacturing, 6% in construction, and 76% within the services sector (CIA, 2013). Furthermore, if the dominance of the services sector is to be assessed not by the composition of the workforce, but by the contribution towards the economy, in 2012 services sector contributed 69.6% of the GDP (CIA, 2013). In the context of the commercial structure within Canada it appears that the country fulfils the criteria for post-industrial society.