The proportion of Quebecers who use only French at work is declining in the province, while more and more workers must incorporate English into their daily lives, according to the most recent data from the Office québécois de la langue française ( OQLF).
In the 2023 edition of its report on the language of work in Quebec, published Thursday, the OQLF reveals that 66% of adult workers use French at least 90% of the time in the context of their employment, a proportion similar to those of the 2016 (67%) and 2010 (66%) studies.
However, even if “French still has its place in the Quebec labor market”, the OQLF noted that “Quebec workers are increasingly using English as part of their duties” .
This means that the proportion of Quebecers who use French exclusively at work has increased from 39.5% in 2016 to 32.2% in 2023.
“This shows that there is still a lot of work to be done for French to regain its rightful place. Working in French is a right enshrined in the Charter of the French Language,” responded the Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, in writing.
Among those aged 18 to 34, only 22.3% of workers use French exclusively in the context of their employment, which confirms that “younger workers use French less at work than older workers”, underlined the OQLF in its report.
“More broadly, 58.2% of workers aged 18 to 34 work in French at least 90% of the time, while this is the case for more than two thirds (68.9%) of people aged 45 to 54 years old and for 70.5% of those aged 55 and over,” specified the OQLF.
When respondents to the OQLF study were asked about the reasons that push them to use a language other than French at work, 30.6% responded that they must do so mainly to serve customers, communicate with people or consult documents from outside Quebec, while 29.3% of them said they had to do so to serve Quebec customers speaking another language.
In his written statement, Minister Roberge was also delighted to see that the proportion of English-speaking people who work exclusively or generally in French has been increasing since 2010, while this increased from 8.2% in 2010 to 13.7% in 2023.
“This is progress that was possible thanks to Law 96, but we are aware that we must do more,” he admitted.