Labour shortage becoming ‘desperate’

[DearSummer]

The article, quite frankly, is full of it. For instance, in some fields, there might be a shortage of people to work at $10/hour, but certainly, if the salary is raised to $15/hour, then people naturally would be stimulated to retrain, for example.

I know that in some instances, employers propogate this 'shortage' myth because the have a sense of entitlement to cheap labour. For instance, the fast food industry is hooked on cheap minimum wage positions. I don't think anyone should have the expectation of getting rich working at McDonalds as an employee, but working at McDonalds should be enough to survive. Employers in some sectors, like engineering, also push the 'labour shortage' nonsense because they want foreign guest workers. For example, many employers in the United States receive hundreds, sometimes thousands of job applications from qualified individuals for a single position, yet claim they cannot find workers.

What world do you live in? Since when are nurses in Canada extremely underpaid? They make a good wage. Oil workers can make an absolute killing (six figures with little/no education/training). Construction workers in the right trades can make a killing as well.

Those are all good jobs that would provide more than enough income to be middle-class.

[leoben]

We should adopt the German education system.

[Elfer]

An engineer turned into a plumber? Dear Lord.

I've got an engineering degree and I'd be willing to consider taking up a trade (for example, carpentry would be right up my alley and is certainly not somehow beneath me), but there's no way I'd be able to get an apprenticeship. Like I said earlier, there's a skills shortage developing because there is a corresponding shortage of training opportunities. Businesses are trying to get leaner and leaner, but it's not sustainable.

[nemollc]

I've seen a lot of the opposite. LPN use is increasing rapidly, compared to RNs. Although a lot of LPN people have degrees, even in related fields like Kinesiology, Biology, etc.



An engineer turned into a plumber? Dear Lord. But a lot of union workplaces have fairly strict rules. For instance, the local electric utility refuses to hire new engineering grads to do basically computer programming work, because engineers cannot join unions, while the 'computer programming' function at that particular utility is apparently unionized. So they complain of a shortage of computer programmers, but ignore the engineers that apply, even though they could do the job quite easily.

where is your source that they discriminate engineers based on the union factor?

better yet wheres your source that engineers cant join unions?

[adamtheman]

There is such a massive shortage of nurses that it will never recover. It takes 4 years of schooling to become a nurse. So instead of investing in more schools, they just created practical nurses. And they aren't finished yet. Over the next 10-20 years we will see Physician Assistants become one of the most rapidly expanding careers in Canada. The days of going to your local family doctor, or a walk-in clinic to see a real doctor are dwindling down. Eventually you'll only be able to see PA's at a walk-in clinic and only if they refer you can you see a "real doctor". It's just a shame it has come to this. Do we need doctors to diagnose a common cold or deal with someone who has a sore arm? Probably not, a PA can easily handle that... but why not just train more doctors. Regardless, I would rather see canadians being trained as PA's than see us letting more and more foreign doctors come in to Canada. There's nothing wrong with foreign physicians, but we need to be training our own citizens, not stealing doctors from other countries.

[vaportrails]

There is such a massive shortage of nurses that it will never recover. It takes 4 years of schooling to become a nurse. So instead of investing in more schools, they just created practical nurses. And they aren't finished yet. Over the next 10-20 years we will see Physician Assistants become one of the most rapidly expanding careers in Canada. The days of going to your local family doctor, or a walk-in clinic to see a real doctor are dwindling down. Eventually you'll only be able to see PA's at a walk-in clinic and only if they refer you can you see a "real doctor". It's just a shame it has come to this. Do we need doctors to diagnose a common cold or deal with someone who has a sore arm? Probably not, a PA can easily handle that... but why not just train more doctors. Regardless, I would rather see canadians being trained as PA's than see us letting more and more foreign doctors come in to Canada. There's nothing wrong with foreign physicians, but we need to be training our own citizens, not stealing doctors from other countries.

The PA program, at least in Ontario is still ridiculously restrictive to get into, with only one university offering it and less than 50 seats a year.

Anyone can get into a practical nursing program though, but they will never be able to write prescriptions or perform even the simplest of diagnostics for liability reasons. Also, consider what practical nurses in the US make. Put it this way, $10.25hr would be a raise for many of them, and in many cases these are bona fide health care positions.

Personally, I think Elfer nailed the reason. Employers want every single person they hire to start making them money on Day 1 on the job. That's just not realistic. The truth is, these jobs that require physical presence want to take the same lean/mean mentality that the more virtual businesses like commerce and IT can, through offshoring - but they can't due to the nature of the job - so now they're whining and crying because they have to fork out more money than other sectors.

Like Mark said, it's the entitlement mindset of these companies. They want skilled employees, but they're willing to do nothing and pay nothing to bring them to their doorstep.

[DearSummer]

John Ivison: Outdated federal policies killing jobs in western Canada
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...estern-canada/

Yet, despite the arresting development in the west (Alberta has grown 10.8% since 2006), there are still not enough people to fill all the jobs there, particularly in the skilled trades. To take just a few examples: the mining industry will need 100,000 workers in the next eight years; 150,000 construction workers will retire in the next three years; welders are needed in British Columbia; and even retailers and hoteliers are worried they can’t fill positions.

At the same time, there are parts of the country where the economy has stagnated and the unemployment rate is over 15%.

Brad Wall, the Premier of Saskatchewan, has been vocal in pointing out the role antiquated federal policies have played in perpetuating some of these problems. “Western Canada now suffers from serious labour shortages that threaten future growth. Yet we are paying for a program — Employment Insurance — that discourages Canadians from moving here,” he said recently. “In some regions, a person can work just over 10 weeks and receive almost a year’s worth of EI benefits. A worker in Regina will work roughly twice as long for significantly less. Yet, employees and employers pay identical premiums into this $22-billion-a-year program.”

He was also critical of the federal equalization program, which discourages labour mobility by subsidizing provinces with lower tax bases.

Again, there are jobs but why would people move, retrain, etc. when they can sit at home and collect EI?

But you guys are right about the lack of apprenticeships, at least in Ontario, thanks to the amazing Dalton McGuinty and his special interest groups:

In this circumstance, you might imagine the Ontario government is pulling out all the stops to increase the size of its skilled labour pool. If so, you’d be wrong. The provincial government in Ontario is so obliged to the unions for their support and relative quiescence, it has failed to introduce reforms that would increase the number of apprentices, even though the province will eventually experience its own skilled labour shortages.

Dalton McGuinty’s government has established the College of Trades to set apprentice ratios in the province. Vested interest has sought to keep the ratio of journeymen to apprentices at a much higher rate in Ontario than in other provinces, in order to drive up wages. In Ontario, there are five journeymen bricklayers for every apprentice, compared with one to one in Nova Scotia and one to two in Alberta.

[Mark77]

Again, there are jobs but why would people move, retrain, etc. when they can sit at home and collect EI?

In many cases, the work is so highly cyclical, and the employers make such minimal efforts to mitigate the cyclicality, that packing up, moving to Alberta, taking on a monster mortgage in an inflated housing market, is more risk than sitting back in Newfoundland with a paid-off cheap house, on EI.

My uncle struggled with this. He lived in Edmonton, lost his job when a long-term, extremely well paid employer in Edmonton dissappeared (moved its operations to Singapore). Could of moved to Fort McMurray and probably gotten a job for similar money (ie: $120-$140k/year), but he would have been faced with an additional $600k of mortgage debt with the possibility, if not the probability, that, at some point, housing prices in Fort McMurray would collapse once supply met demand, or the oilsands projects ramped down due to poor economics.

Turns out, he fell into ill health and died a few years later -- coincidentally right amidst the crash of 2008. If he had moved to Fort McMurray and had huge mortgage payments, his family probably would have been forced to liquidate his house at a very distressed time. And renting for a 55-year-old man, quite frankly, isn't really socially acceptable.

The housing is a *huge* issue. When house prices were 2-3X income, it wasn't a financial death sentence to move around the country, from job to job. These days, at 5-7X income, if one moves around the country, the risk is enormous. Sell a paid-off house in Halifax (ie: $300k) to move to Vancouver with a $700k mortgage, and a collapse in the RE market could render a middle aged person bankrupt.

But you guys are right about the lack of apprenticeships, at least in Ontario, thanks to the amazing Dalton McGuinty and his special interest groups:

I don't know what the Ontario situation is, other than a poor economy that hasn't been very supportive of bringing new people into the industries. Ontario, of course, under McGuinty and Harper, pursuing policy that is very unfriendly to business formation or growth.

[mork]

On the topic of the good ol' get-your-hands-dirty variety of jobs being the bread and butter, Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs) gave a fairly nice talk on this very subject at TED.
Worth a watch (the pointed remarks regarding the job market and misguided politics come near the end of a a couple of lengthy anecdotes).
http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_c...irty_jobs.html

[virgilaug]

There is such a massive shortage of nurses that it will never recover. It takes 4 years of schooling to become a nurse. So instead of investing in more schools, they just created practical nurses. And they aren't finished yet. Over the next 10-20 years we will see Physician Assistants become one of the most rapidly expanding careers in Canada. The days of going to your local family doctor, or a walk-in clinic to see a real doctor are dwindling down. Eventually you'll only be able to see PA's at a walk-in clinic and only if they refer you can you see a "real doctor". It's just a shame it has come to this. Do we need doctors to diagnose a common cold or deal with someone who has a sore arm? Probably not, a PA can easily handle that... but why not just train more doctors. Regardless, I would rather see canadians being trained as PA's than see us letting more and more foreign doctors come in to Canada. There's nothing wrong with foreign physicians, but we need to be training our own citizens, not stealing doctors from other countries.

Can't simply train more physicians. One of the key components of doctor training in practice and there simply aren't enough places to offer practice for new physicians. Even more, there is a ratio associated with the number of doctors which dictates how many nurses, clinics, equipment, etc. the health system needs to provide for each doctor. Basically the more doctors, the more of everything the health system needs to offer them, so increasing the number of doctor is simply not that easy.



Relates to what I posted.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/...-overseas.html

[dibksbgon]

Re: The lack of apprenticeships.

I don't doubt it is hard in some sense to find an apprenticeship. I think it is hard to find a good apprenticeship either with a unionized company or not. A good employer will want you to learn and permit you to leave for your education and in many cases should be willing to pay for the in school training. Ex. Hubby pays $400 for his 2 months of in-class training when it comes up. When he finishes, the union pays him back $400. But this is not just a union thing. A great non-union employer would be willing to do the same and they are out there.

While I do not want to rely on personal experience, my hubby begged and pleaded (not exactly, but he was very persistent) with the local carpenter's union to take him on as an apprentice. They did after he kept calling to follow up and express his interest. He had a bit of related experience working in a lumber yard before hand and doing manual labour jobs and also took a Building Construction program that exempted him from his first year/level of apprentice schooling. This is why pre-apprenticeship training within the secondary schools is important and extremely helpful.

[drey2k]

There's an oversupply of people who want a desk job and a shortage of people in the trades. This makes sense. Too many people go to university and not enough people doing the other stuff. This is why it's often not appropriate to generalize the job market as a whole. There are always parts of the job market that are better than others.

I don't think this is an issue with private vs public or CEO not training the workforce. This is simply a cultural phenomenon. Many people think working a desk job is better. There should be more education so that people understand what path is better for them. When I was in high school, there's a general consensus that you're dumb if you don't take the academic route. It would be nice if people choose the right path to begin with, and if there's less stigma associated with non-desk jobs. Households are wasting too much money sending their kids to school only to find out later that they aren't cut out for office life. The only ones benefiting from over education of society are the money sucking universities.

BS

You need to join a wait list at most schools if you want to pursue trades, what you said makes no sense. Also, there is VERY little demand for inexperienced trades people (i.e. new grads from trades programs).

There is a huge oversupply of tradespeople in metropolitan areas, if you want a sure trades job you'll need to live in bum fuk nowhere, which is not really living.

[vaportrails]

I have a buddy who finally found an apprenticeship as a mechanic and all they had him do was e-tests all day long.

Eventually, he just took a line job at Toyota for $24hr. He got sick of not getting any relevant experience from his mentors.

[dibksbgon]

Re: Wait list at most schools. Ok to clarify. Some trades are licensed. Plumbing. You can't call yourself a plumber or electrician (and a bunch of others) for example without being licensed and doing the Red Seal. Others like carpentry -- you can call yourself a carpenter without having done an apprenticeship through the government, becoming licensed, or doing your RED SEAL but the option is their for you to do the RED SEAL and do a formal apprenticeship through the government. Look it up. I am explaining it poorly.

If you do an apprenticeship through the government, you are registered by the government and they call you up for training either before you have accumulated hours (which keeps happening to my husband) or when you reach the required number for that level. You then go to school for 8 weeks after getting the letter from the ministry and being released by your employer. There is NO wait list if you are registered in an apprenticeship by the government with a participating employer (any company, union, whatever who is willing to give you on the job experience for the next 4 - 5 years). Not saying their on not waitlists for "trades programs" but for the most part it is worthwhile to pursue a trade through a registered apprenticeship. Aside from being able to do the Red Seal which helps your employability across the country, they throw money at you to do it. As I have said, hubby pays $400 to Algonquin for the 8 weeks when he gets called up but the union pays him back as will good employers. Furthermore those commercials advertising $4000 for tradespersons is completely true and uber easy to get. Hubby got for $1000 for being registered for 12 months as a carpenter and then another $1000 for 2 years and will get $2000 when he becomes a journeyman.


Re: Oversupply in metro areas: In Toronto/GTA, yes. But the sure trades job thing in the middle of nowhere is not a guarantee either. The good thing about Ottawa, even with squeezes, there is development going on by the feds. Just a personal interjection, hubby has said GTA is bad because the union takes on way way way too many apprentices who stay at first year and are not forced to do their schooling (or be turfed from the union) when the ministry calls them up. The reason the apprentices try and stay away from the schooling is because they believe (rightly so in some respects) that they are cheaper labour and will be in greater demand than the more expensive fourth years and journeymen. Of course this is just his union and yes a UNION perspective.

[JK400]

BS

You need to join a wait list at most schools if you want to pursue trades, what you said makes no sense. Also, there is VERY little demand for inexperienced trades people (i.e. new grads from trades programs).

There is a huge oversupply of tradespeople in metropolitan areas, if you want a sure trades job you'll need to live in bum fuk nowhere, which is not really living.

Agree 100%.

Don't listen to most of the white collar schmucks here talking about the trades, they have no clue what they're talking about.