National Adult Literacy Database

In this short document, Human Resources and Social Development Canada briefly describes the Essential Skills Research Project (ESRP) that the federal government launched in the early 1990s and what has been achieved since this project began. The ESRP identified nine Essential Skills: reading text, document use, numeracy, writing, oral communication, working with others, thinking skills, computer use and continuous learning. It also developed a methodology to profile the skill requirements of occupations in the Canadian labour market.