Labour shortage becoming ‘desperate’

[Dilton]

You say "retrain and relocate" as if anyone can do it.

Retraining costs money, and even if you qualify for free education like with the 2nd career program, you still need more money to pay your rent/mortgage, buy food/clothes, daycare if you have small kids, etc. Not everyone can do it. Relocating is also not an option if for example you have a spouse who has a job in your current city and there are no jobs in her field in the city you want to relocate to.

It's easy to say "those who can't find work should do xyz" but you're not actually in their shoes and you don't know what obstacles they might face.

[Mark77]

Yup Dilton. I've seen such quite a bit -- a typical scenario is that a guy will marry his college sweetheart, and then find one of those rare engineering jobs out there. The wife, for whatever reason, needs to move to accept a promotion or career change -- and the husband/guy can't move because he can't find a replacement engineering (or CS) job in the new city.

The result: usually some sort of seperation/divorce.

A few posters here are so smug that they managed to find a decent (in their view) engineering job straight out of school, but the problem is -- try finding a second or a third one if you ever have to move. The lack of a labour market in Canada that is liquid, really leads to a lot of problems in this respect. And it is certain to get much worse as we are probably heading into a housing price crash, and people who are 'underwater' will probably have trouble relocating to the jobs as well.

[d182]

Notice how those jobs are difficult to outsource.

Nursing. Construction. Trucking.

Requires physical presence.

Construction - Singapore (and Dubai?) import their workers from 3rd world countries to build everything while paying them money they can barely live off. I'd say that's a form of outsourcing.