On a recent February evening, Karl Eve received an emergency call from a restaurant owner in Canmore, Alta. The busy eatery had suddenly found itself with no hot water, even though the basement hot water tanks appeared to be working fine. A plumber with 10 years’ experience, Eve eventually traced the problem to a malfunctioning dishwasher and got the hot water flowing again—much to the owner’s relief.
It’s the sort of detective work Eve says he loves about his job. He also likes that his plumbing business, which he runs with his wife in nearby Exshaw, provides his family with a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. But it was a career he very nearly missed. Never a fan of textbooks, Eve ended up toiling in a southern Ontario gypsum mine after high school. It was only after moving to Alberta years later that he considered a career in the trades. A chance meeting at a church potluck led to a ride-along with a local plumber and, ultimately, an apprenticeship. “I discovered there was a lot to learn, especially when it came to math,” Eve says of his four years of training, which included eight weeks a year in a classroom. “The amount of education was very surprising to me, but in a positive way. I grasped it with both hands, so to speak.”
Eve’s story is more rare than it should be in Canada. Many consider the trades to be low-paying, go-nowhere jobs, if they consider them at all. But it’s a perception not grounded in reality, as Eve’s healthy hourly rate of $90 to $135 suggests. Nor is it one Canada can afford to maintain. Numerous studies warn Canada is facing a massive shortage of skilled workers over the next few decades as millions of baby boomers hit retirement age and exit the workforce.
At the same time, the nature of work itself is changing as the country transitions to a so-called knowledge economy that relies on a well-trained and highly educated workforce to produce value-added products and services. Those without the necessary skills could soon find themselves unemployable. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce estimates there will be 550,000 unskilled workers who won’t be able to find work by 2016. By 2021, it says, the number could be well over a million. At the same time, it’s estimated there will be 1.5 million skilled job vacancies in 2016, and 2.6 million by 2021.
Economists call it a skills “mismatch.” The country is in dire need of engineers, health workers and skilled tradespeople. Yet tens of thousands of students continue to pursue degrees in the arts and humanities. The result is an unemployment rate that refuses to fall below seven per cent (about 13.5 per cent among youth), while employers increasingly complain about vacant jobs that promise good wages—particularly in Western Canada, where the oil, gas and mining industries are booming. “The new phenomenon here is that we’re going to be seeing pockets of persistent high unemployment existing right alongside serious worker shortages in particular industries,” says Perrin Beatty, a former member of Parliament and the chamber’s CEO.
Hence, Canada not only needs to encourage more people to enter the workforce, but to ensure everyone will be productive once they get there. That’s a tall order in a country where, incredibly, nearly half of all adults don’t have the necessary literacy and numeracy skills to participate in a modern economy. As a result, experts say a dramatic rethink of how our post-secondary system works is in order. Though Canada’s universities are among the best in the world, critics argue for a much greater focus on colleges and polytechnic universities, since the latter are better plugged into the business community. Others say the country needs to do a better job of informing young people about the breadth of high-paying career opportunities in a modern economy.
The trend toward “people without jobs, jobs without people” poses the single biggest long-term threat to Canadian economic growth, exacerbating Canada’s already lagging productivity and innovation, according to one recent report. But attempts to head off calamity are so far being met with the usual obstacles. Companies complain about the additional cost of training employees; unions are wary about foreign workers taking local jobs; and parents continue to try and steer their children into a few prestigious professions. Something has to give. “We have a skills problem well on its way to becoming a crisis,” Beatty says. “And you need only look at the demographic wedge that we’re confronting to see that the problem is only going to get worse.”
A recent report by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce suggested as much as one-fifth of Canada’s labour market already suffers from too few qualified workers, particularly in the health care, mining, business services and advanced manufacturing sectors. The average unemployment rate for those jobs is just one per cent, while workers in those positions are seeing wage gains of nearly four per cent annually, more than double that of the broader economy—a telltale sign of a labour shortage.
At the same time, the CIBC report noted a surplus of employees in occupations such as food services, clerical work, sales and recreational guiding—a group that collectively accounts for about 16 per cent of the workforce. Another study, released last week by the C.D. Howe Institute, noted that the mismatch is especially problematic in the Western provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia.
Evidence of the shortage is already popping up in day-to-day life. In Alberta, the booming oil sands have sucked workers away from dozens of other occupations, some of which—like policing—were already experiencing shortages. As a result, Calgarians who get pulled over by the police are just as likely to be questioned in a British or Scottish accent following a U.K recruitment drive several years ago. Other provinces, meanwhile, are preying on foreign countries that are still recovering from the 2009 global crisis. Saskatchewan is targeting Ireland, which required a bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, for a fresh supply of heavy duty mechanics, welders, engineers and machinists.
But such cross-border shopping for talent threatens to become a problem in its own right. A survey of 38,000 companies in 41 countries last year by Milwaukee’s ManpowerGroup found that one-third were unable to find enough workers with the right skills, suggesting a global shortage is emerging. One country’s gain can quickly become another’s loss. “Highly skilled people are extremely mobile,” explains Beatty, adding that it creates disincentives for employers and government to pour money into training programs, lest all those newly skilled workers get poached.
The flip side of Canada’s skills mismatch—all those bartenders and baristas with expensive university degrees—is also troubling. Not only are underemployed Canadians contributing below their full potential, they’re creating a domino effect by taking jobs away from those without skills who can’t find work. The economic impact is potentially huge. At a time when the Bank of Canada is trying to juice business activity with continued record-low interest rates, CIBC chief economist Avery Shenfeld argues that Canada’s “labour market mismatch is big enough not only to reduce the effectiveness of monetary policy, but also to limit the growth potential of the labour market and the economy as a whole.”
In a recent speech, Diane Finley, the minister of human resources and skills development, compared the situation to a man listening for an oncoming train by putting his ear to the tracks. “Well, folks, it’s time to stop listening for the train, because it’s bearing down on us,” she said, citing a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey that found two-thirds of CEOs ranked the lack of key skills as the biggest threat to their growth prospects. “Canada’s economy is changing, the workplace is changing and we all have to change with it.”
Nor is the problem simply constrained economic growth. Although there’s some debate about when the full force of the baby-boomer retirement wave will hit—many Canadians are working past the age of 65 and the lingering effects of the 2009 recession have caused many businesses to hold off on hiring—some experts are forecasting a profound shift in the way the entire economy works. As Canadians get older, on average, they’re expected to spend less money while putting a greater strain on health care, pensions and old-age security. Those services, in turn, will be supported by a declining number of working-age Canadians. “We’re going to be in a hell of a problem unless we find ways to increase the size of the workforce and encourage higher participation rates,” says Rick Miner, the president of Toronto consulting firm Miner & Miner, which published a report on Canada’s labour challenges last year. “We’re not going to have the resources to provide ourselves with the services we’ve come to think of as normal, whether it’s health care or anything else.”
Ottawa is taking the threat seriously, and one of the biggest weapons in its arsenal is the country’s immigration system. The federal government has already announced changes, to take effect this spring, that would place a greater emphasis on younger workers and speed up the process employers must go through to hire new Canadians in occupations where there are immediate labour shortages.
But immigration alone won’t be a panacea. Many new immigrants tend to settle in big cities like Toronto and Vancouver, where there are big ethnic communities and established social networks. By contrast, many of the most acute labour shortages are in the country’s hinterlands, where oil and mining companies’ operations are based. There are also problems with the recognition of foreign credentials and language skills, which has traditionally led to a much lower workforce participation rate for first-generation immigrants. Whereas roughly 82 per cent of Canadians between the age of 25 to 54 have historically participated in the labour force, the corresponding number for recent immigrants is just 63 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. It remains to be seen whether policy changes that target workers with high-demand skills will be able to dramatically narrow this gap.
Individual industries face their own problems with foreign workers. Beatty, for example, notes that the trucking industry is suffering a critical shortage of drivers, which could have an outsized impact on the economy, given the importance of truck transport to North American supply chains. “Increasingly, we’re having to look at new immigrants to fill those jobs,” he says. “But that poses a problem because security requirements at the border limit the countries drivers can come from if they want admission to the United States.” There’s also the risk of a backlash if foreign workers are perceived to be favoured for jobs that might otherwise go to Canadians. In B.C., a mining company recently found itself the target of a union lawsuit after it hired about 200 foreign temporary workers from China. They’ve since been sent home.
Finding more workers is only one side of the equation. “We also need to look at the educational side,” says Miner. “That’s where the real payoff is.” Despite Canada’s solid public schools and high-quality post-secondary institutions, 48 per cent of adults lack sufficient literacy skills “to function well at work and in daily living,” according to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. While Canada actually scores relatively high—about fifth out of 20 developed countries— on basic reading, or “prose” literacy, it falls to the middle of the pack on “document” or “quantitive” literacy skills, which involve things like reading charts and graphs or balancing a chequebook. All of which suggests that many Canadians are increasingly ineligible for the occupations of today, let alone the jobs of tomorrow.
High-tech skills are becoming a prerequisite for many jobs. “Everything we do is heavily laden with technology—even down to drywall installation,” says James Knight, the president of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges. “I don’t know if you’ve watched this recently, but it’s all done with lasers bouncing around the room.” He estimates nearly 75 per cent of jobs now being created in Ontario require a post-secondary education, but that only about 58 per cent of the population has one. “The people we need require a much more sophisticated level of education,” he says. “And we’re simply not there yet.”
Also key is making sure Canadians receive the right training. Miner, for one, argues that government efforts to encourage innovation by pumping billions into university research over the past 30 years may have actually exacerbated the country’s labour woes. While all that money has resulted in exciting discoveries and publications in elite journals, it hasn’t necessarily done a great job in preparing graduates for the workforce. “You have parents that desperately want to make the right decision for their kids. And you can’t fault them if they want their kids to go to university,” Miner says. “But what parents don’t realize is that you can get a great career through college, and better earning potential. But the status just isn’t there.” Universities, on the other hand, cite stats that show graduates have filled 1.3 million of the 1.5 million new professional and management positions created over the past two decades.
Knight says it’s ultimately a question of finding the right balance. He argues that colleges are particularly well-suited to bridging the divide between academics and training because they already work closely with industry to develop their programs. He cites a four-year degree at B.C.’s Selkirk College that focuses on geographic information systems, including GPS applications used heavily by the forestry and mining industries. “Where in a university calendar would you find anything about GPS?” he says. “At a time when the principal constraint on economic growth in this country is a shortage of human capital, we really have to think about what we’re emphasizing and where we put our resources.” He adds that the post-secondary system would benefit immensely if students could move more seamlessly between colleges and universities, noting that as many as 20 per cent of college applicants already have a university degree. “Obviously, it’s not efficient to spend six years in post-secondary education when considerably less might have done the job,” he says.
Another limitation of the current system, according to a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, is that Canadian university research, though top-notch, has a poor track record of finding its way into the commercial sphere. In contrast, colleges are developing a niche for themselves by having faculty and students work closely with smaller companies to develop new products and services—applied research that can be immediately implemented in the marketplace. Nobina Robinson, the CEO of Polytechnics Canada, which represents 11 colleges and institutes of technology, says the trend not only promises to boost Canada’s innovation across a variety of sectors, but will equip future employees with skills that employers need to be successful. “The knowledge economy is always saying we need more M.B.A.s and Ph.D.s,” Robinson says. “But to come up with big discoveries and innovative breakthroughs, you actually need people who can make, design and build things, too.”
Among the recommendations Polytechnics Canada has put forward to Ottawa: more government support for applied research and commercialization programs; more focus on apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs; and a requirement that bidders on government contracts create apprenticeship positions as a condition of their bids. Fewer than half of Canadians who register as apprentices every year actually go on to become certified. The reasons are many and vary across provinces and industries, but Robinson cites a general unwillingness among many employers to take on apprentices—possibly because they fear rivals will steal their newly trained workers. A study last year by the Conference Board of Canada showed that investment in employee training among Canadian companies has fallen nearly 40 per cent since 1993. “We need to reward employers through the tax code who invest in training,” Robinson says. She adds that governments could also do a much better job of making the apprenticeship process more attractive. “The philosophical issue is that when you pay an apprentice through [Employment Insurance] to do their in-class portion of their study, they’re being treated as an employee, not a learner,” she says. “If we want more skilled tradespeople, we’ve got to change.”
Back in Exshaw, Karl Eve’s wife, Michelle, a former teacher who, incidentally, has two university degrees, says Canadians who believe that university education is the only path to prosperity are selling themselves short. She recalls her own initial feelings when her husband announced he wanted to become a plumber. “I just had that sense, which we’re all a bit guilty of, I think, that the more capable people go to university and the less capable people end up in technical schools,” she says. “But when I saw what Karl was doing, the level of mathematics really impressed me. It’s stuff that most people just don’t know.” And unless more people make a similar discovery, Canada is going to have a lot more to worry about than leaky pipes.
Where are all the jobs?
Despite persistent high unemployment in Canada, many occupations are expected to face serious shortages of qualified workers over the next decade. The following shows the percentage of job openings that are forecast to go unfilled in each occupation, with more vacancies than actual job seekers.
Technical sales specialists, wholesale trade 23%
Logging and forestry workers 27%
Finance and insurance administrative occupations 28%
Stationary engineers and power station and system operators 28%
Cleaners 30%
Service station attendants, grocery clerks and shelf stockers 31%
Administrative and regulatory occupations (e.g., court officers) 34%
Transportation officers (e.g., pilots, air and marine traffic controllers) 34%
College and other vocational instructors 34%
Insurance and real estate sales workers and buyers 35%
Mine service workers and operators in oil and gas drilling 36%
Managers in protective services (e.g., police, fire, armed forces) 38%
Positions in agriculture, horticulture and aquaculture 38%
Administrative support clerks 40%
Logging machinery operators 40%
Technical jobs in libraries, archives, museums and galleries 45%
Supervisors in mining, oil and gas 58%
Secretaries, recorders and transcriptionists 71%
Supervisors in logging and forestry 100%
Beware: jobs expected to have too many workers in the next 10 years:
Managers in art, culture, recreation and sport
Security guards
Athletes and coaches
Fishing vessel skippers
Cashiers
Computer and information system professionals
Chefs and cooks
Pulp and paper machine operators
Physicists and astronomers
Geologists
첫댓글 실감나는 경제원리를 체계적이며 현실적 감각으로 잘 정리해 주셨네요
A+++++ 감사^^
한국에서도 완전 심한 양극화에 대형유통망들이 골목상권 다 잡아먹고 대기업들이 다 빨아 먹고있는거줘..
자본주의의 이런 문제점을 보완할수있는 제도가 있어야 할텐데...
그리고 요즘은 전쟁분위기까지 잡아가고있는중입니다..한국의 미래가 심히 걱정스러워요..잉.~
좋은 글 감사합니다. 해결책이 없을까요?
멸치떼 전략이 살길입니다. 한 점포가 한마리 멸치로 남아 있는 한 승률이 작다고 생각합니다. 멸치떼는 그 자체가 대형화입니다.멸치만이 구사하는 사냥기술 그것이 전문화입니다. 한인상인 조직만이 가지는 전문성. 구상하고 개발하는 것이 큰 일입니다.혼자서는 할 수 없는 일입니다. 아니면 혼자서도 생존할 수 잇는 "필살기"륽 만들어 내야 하지 않을까요 ? 진정한 "람보"..
삭제된 댓글 입니다.
메니져님 댓글은 캐나다 이야기인가요? 한국이야기인가요?
이곳에 빨리 적응해서 사는것이 가장 현명한것 같습디다 그외 다른방법 없습니다 이래서 나쁘다 저래서 힘들다 해봐야 혀---ㄹ압만 오릅니다 여긴 캐나다지 한국이 아닙니다
언제나 유익한 글 감사드립니다. ~ 환희님
오랜 만입니다. 여전하시군요. 못난 생각 못난 글 유익하게 보셨다니 감사할 따름입니다. 하루를 살아도, 어디에서 살든 "오늘 보다 나은 삶"을 추구하고자 하는 몸부림일 뿐입니다. 건승하십시오.
언제나 좋은 글 올려 주셔서 고맙게 잘 읽었읍니다.
멸치떼를 즐기는 상류 사람들의 갈퀴질은 펀드매니져님 말씀대로 가혹하기만 합니다. 세수를 올려주는 이들의 그물질에 정부는 찬사를 보내죠?
약육강식의 가혹한 현실속에서 이곳의 원조 멸치들은 여전히 게으르기만 하고....강자의 영원한 밥이 되어 주는 게으른 원조 멸치들 ^^ 우리 이민자 멸치떼가 파워를 발휘할 날이 올 수 있을지요?
오랜만에 뵙습니다. 건강하시죠? NB 주는 독립이민보다 사업이민이 대세이죠. 즉 도전적이고 모험적인 사업가 정신으로 NB주에 한인사업community 를 형성하기로, 이미 "멸치떼"가 되기로 암묵적 합의를 한 것으로 보면 안될까요? 그럼 이제는 멸치떼가 비합리적이고 모순적인 갈퀴질을 벗어나는 방법, 참치류나 고등어떼등 큰 물고기와 싸워 덜 희생당하는 방법 더 나아가 안정적인 플랑크톤 사냥법등을 함께 개발하는 것만 남는 겁니다. 게으른 원조 멸치들과 어떻게 효과적으로 조화로운 한폭의 그림을 그릴지도 연구해야 하구요. 한마디로 다가오는 모든 문제에 대해 공부하고 연구개발하는 풍토가 사업에 임하는 자세라고 저는 봅니다.
네 맞습니다. 저도 그런 차원에서 글 잘 읽었읍니다. 그런 전체를 끌어가는 조직과 세력이 생겨났으면 좋겠읍니다.
한국도 베이비붐 세대의 창업분위기가 컨비의 창궐로 공급자만 배부르고 컨비는 어려워져만 간다는데, 이곳도 배부르고 거드름 피우는 공급자들에 맞서는 멸치떼의 날선 전략이 먹힐 날이 오길 바래야죠.
오랫만에 좋은글 잘 읽었구요, 자주 뵙지요. 그곳도 이젠 봄이 오고 있죠?
좋은글 감사 합니다.
'"멸치떼의 날선 전략 참 좋은 표현입니다. 꼭 필요하구요. 이곳은 처음으로 점포 지붕위 눈제거 작업을 안하고 지난 첫 겨울철이엇습니다. 몇백불 save 했습니다. 덕분에. 눈이 많이 와도 다음날 바로 녹을 정도로 "기상이변"이 눈에 띄는 군요. 여름철 팥빙수라도 팔아 볼까 하네요. 프랑스 파리에서 blacbeah sherbet 라는 이름으로 대박을 낸 한국인이 있습니다. 수익이 나면 무슨 아이템이라도 개발하고 연구해야죠. 만약 이사업을 40개 점포를 대상으로 하는 project 사업으로 하면 더 쉽겟지요. "간접비 절감"+ idea hitch-hiking. Anyway, 5분이면 펼쳐지는 바다위 광어잡이 한번 오세요 .
네 광어잡이 정말 흥미롭습니다. 지난 연말 뉴저지 한남수퍼에서 떠온 제주 마늘광어회를 호텔로 가져가서 실컷 먹었는데 정말 미치도록 맛잇더군요. ^^
올핸 그쪽에 골프와 낚시를 겸한 방문 꼭 해보렵니다. ^^
듣기만 해도 엔돌핀이 쑥쑥 올라오는군요.ㅎㅎㅎㅎ 얼마나 맛잇게 드셨길래 "미치도록"입니까. 저도 압니다. 그 환상의 맛! 사업도 "미치도록" 한번 해보고 싶군요. 저는 골프는 못치구요(이제 배워야죠) 낚시는 "광자급"입니다. 이번에는 캐러킷 방향으로 장어잡이를 가볼까 하는데 여건이 될지 모르겟어요. 작년 한박스 40마리 40불주고 샀어요. 베덜스트는 최근 광산에서 흘러 나오는 일부 잔여 오염수의 영향으로 그 많던 장어들이 점점 귀해 지고 있습니다. 아쉬워요. 오시면 뵙겟습니다.