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Lower-wage workers generally report limited access to formal learning opportunities. This paper investigates factors that influence learning among lower-wage workers. Using focus groups and a survey, it examines the role of demographics, self-efficacy, and outcome expectancies related to learning new skills, access to resources, and the moderating role of social capital. Despite their high levels of self-efficacy, expectancies, and motivation to learn, lower-wage workers report a low incidence of training, with only 13 per cent receiving formal training from their employers and only eight per cent participating in formal training on their own initiative. Although social capital appears to increase the likelihood of participating in learning activities, lower-wage workers tend to report low levels of social capital. These results suggest that lower-wage workers would participate more in formal learning activities if they had better access to learning opportunities and if they had higher levels of social capital.

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Using Statistics Canada's Workplace and Employee Survey (WES) data for 2003 and 2004, this research note addresses an important component of labour market retention by investigating whether the presence of workplace child care and elder care programs influences employees' decision to quit. The key findings are as follows: (a) workplace elder care support is almost non-existent in Canada; (b) employees are more likely to remain with an organization that offers workplace child care support programs; and (c) those employees who actually use the workplace child care support are even more likely to stay with the organization. We suggest that future research should assess whether the particular support programs themselves 'cause' employees to stay, or whether there are other factors (within organizations offering these support programs) that account for the retention.

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The projects reported herein represent a portion of the outputs of the research network on The Changing Nature of Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) as a Collaborative Research Initiative on the New Economy (Project No. 512-2002-1011). This network is composed of a large national survey and 12 specially focused case study projects that when linked together as a whole provide the most comprehensive view of changes and challenges facing work and learning efforts in Canada today.

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