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Skills

Skill shortages in Canada

A National Skills Agenda
http://www.accc.ca/ftp/briefs-memoires/election-skills.pdf
The average age of journeymen in Canada is over 48 years old. That means that in the next seven to 10 years, there's going to be almost a 100-per-cent turnover in those skilled workers. We have to start training our young people now and change attitudes.  Canada needs a concerted, national effort to upgrade the skills and education levels of its workforce...we are witnessing a growing demand for new skills and abilities in our working population.  The federal Labour Department's updated Job Futures manual says some form of post-secondary job education or training will be required for 72 % of the 1.3 million new jobs expected to be created in the Canadian economy between last year and 2004. The largest portion of new job creation is expected in occupations that require a community college diploma or trades certificate, such as construction and transportation trades, health and computer sciences, firefighting and policework. Education is now the main barometer of competitiveness among countries- more than capital, and more than technology. It has become a linchpin in planning for Canada's future. On a constant dollar basis, government support for colleges and universities in Canada has decreased from slightly more than $11,000 per student in 1978 to less than $7,000 per student in 1998, a decline of close to 40 %.

Economy Overview 2001
http://canadianeconomy.gc.ca/english/economy/overview.html
The most dramatic structural change our economy has undergone is the rise of the services sector. Though our goods-producing industries account for 33% of our national economy, the Canadian services sector is much larger, employing three out of four Canadians and generating two-thirds of our gross domestic product.

Canadian Skills Shortage
http://www.cata.ca/Advocacy/Human_Resources/skills_speech.html
In 2000, there were 50,000 vacant jobs in the high tech industry... The problem is aggravated by the fact that it is not confined to Canada, it is global. The shortage of information technology workers in the United States is estimated at 1.2 million. The gap between supply and demand is the same, 1.2 million, in Europe. Even India, which was famous for its strong supply of quality software developers, is now suffering shortages in the fastest growing specialties... Technological skills are not the only need. "Marketers are harder to find than engineers."
The high tech industry is not the only one which suffers from a lack of educated employees... The baby boomers are approaching retirement... Nurses, doctors, school teachers, university professors and many other professionals will be in short supply over the next five to ten years. There are already shortages of carpenters, masons and machinists. Steps must be taken now to expand enrolment in apprenticeships programs, colleges and universities to meet the need. 2001

Immigration and Skill Shortages - Immigration as a Source of Skills
http://www.clbc.ca/files/Reports/IHB_section_b.pdf
Employed Immigrants: An Industry Sector Profile: Immigrants account for one out of every five employed Canadians. Recent immigrants – those in Canada for 10 years or less – number 893,330 and represent 6.1% of the employed population... In the manufacturing sector, 27% of the employed workforce is foreign-born, while nearly one out of ten (9.4%) is a recent immigrant. Within some sub-sectors, such as clothing manufacturing, computer and electronic product manufacturing, and plastics and rubber manufacturing, the share of employment held by immigrants is even more pronounced (57%, 39% and 33% respectively). Contribution Of Immigrants To Labour Force Growth: Between 1991 and 2001, 978,000 immigrants arrived in Canada and joined the country’s workforce. These recent immigrants represented 70 % of the decade’s total net labour force growth. > 110,245 recently arrived immigrants joined retail trade. Since the sector’s overall net labour force growth was 36,410, recent immigrants represent more than 300% of the sector’s net labour force growth. > In health and social services 75,000 recent immigrants accounted for 24% of that sector’s net labour force growth. > In the construction sector, the total labour force declined by about 13,000 or 1.4% even though nearly 33,000 recent immigrants joined that sector’s labour force. > In the provinces of Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia, immigration has played an even bigger role as a source of labour and skills.

Shortage of qualified labour in smaller firms
http://www.hrmguide.net/canada/jobmarket/labour_shortage.htm
Shortage of qualified labour at nearly half of all smaller firms in the country, total number of unfilled jobs ranges from 250,000 to 300,000… It is important to understand that the shortage of qualified labour is not just an inconvenience to business owners, but has a real impact on firms' productivity and their bottom lines… Given that small- and medium-sized business accounts for more than half of GDP in this country, this is a serious economic issue…. Construction firms reported the highest rate (7.7%), followed by the business services sector (6.8%) and agriculture (5.3%). Financial, insurance and real estate firms had the lowest job vacancy rate at 3.7 per cent… What qualities were they looking for in prospective employees? 73% of respondents identified "willingness to learn" as the most important requirement…. 61% identified willingness to stay with the firm, and 60% cited the ability to be customer focused as being of major importance. More teachable skills were also identified, including: technical trade know-how (49%), understanding of the industry or business (46%), computer knowledge (42%), and writing/communications skills (38%).

An Overview of Skills Shortages Issues in British Columbia
http://www.aved.gov.bc.ca/labourmarketinfo/reports/skillshortages.htm
Current and impending "skills shortages" are receiving considerable media, public and government attention at present. The nature and scope of the issue, including the indicators and their interpretation, is discussed below. Links to Branch reports and presentations, as well as other sources of information, on the subject are also provided... Index of contents: Defining skills shortages ... Evidence for skills shortages... Overview of the issues ... For more information.

Serious shortage of skilled workers across Canada: CFIB
http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/view?/news/2001/02/21/jobshortage_010221
At least a quarter-million jobs at small- and medium-sized companies across Canada are vacant due to a shortage of qualified workers… The shortage of qualified labour means 4.7 per cent of jobs in the small business sector go unfilled. That figure is "unacceptable" given the national unemployment rate is 6.9 per cent… "Willingness to learn", “willingness to stay” with the firm and “ability to focus on the customers” were top concern. More teachable skills, such as technical and computer knowledge were key factors for under half of the survey respondents.  CBC News, February 21, 2006.

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An Overview of Labour Market & Skills Shortage Issues in British Columbia and Canada
http://www.aved.gov.bc.ca/labourmarketinfo/reports/skillshortagesresearch.pdf
Widespread general shortage of skilled workers is not occupation or sector specific… Nearly half of CFIB (Canadian Federation of Independent Business) employers (35 per cent in BC) expressed concerns over shortage of qualified labour when surveyed in the second half of 2000...  Almost half of the CFIB employer respondents cited high wage expectations of workers as a reason for hiring difficulties… Skills shortages a threat to competitiveness; 95% had shortages for experienced workers; only 21% had shortages for entry level technical jobs – including IT workers, engineers, technicians…Youth with least education continue to face difficult labour market outcomes …
Potential Structural Occupational Skills Shortages, Canada - Average 2000-2001(from HRDC Labour Force Survey, preliminary work)

Is There a Skill Gap in Canada?
http://economics.ca/cgi/jab?journal=cpp&view=v26s1/CPPv26s1p159.pdf
First, by drawing principally on an analysis of descriptive statistics, we conclude that there is no reason to believe that, globally, Canada is suffering from a broad-based shortage of skilled labour or that its workforce cannot fulfil the economy's needs. Second, examination of microeconomic data reveals an increased frequency of specific labour shortages in certain sectors and occupations in recent years. Nonetheless, it does not appear that these shortages are more common today than they were in the past at similar stages of the business cycle. We conclude that while there may be a growing labour shortage (skilled and low-skilled), there is no aggregate shortage of skilled labour. Third, available data indicate that Canada compares favourably with many of its principal competitors in world markets, both in terms of investments in human capital and in the stock of skills. Finally, we investigate the minimum skill level necessary for success on the Canadian labour market. We conclude that, at the very least, young people today need a high school diploma to qualify for even the lowest skill jobs. Abstract.

Is There a Skill Gap in Canada?
http://www.csls.ca/cpp/1/Gingras&Roy.pdf
From 1971 to 1991, the number of jobs requiring a university diploma increased by 40 %.  Over the same period the number of university graduates on the Canadian labour market increased by 140 %. These figures reveal that the increase in the supply of university education has far outstripped the growth in the economy’s need for these qualifications. Consequently, far from being in deficit, Canada may actually be in a surplus situation in terms of university graduates... In particular, in the case of an economy-wide shortage of skilled labour, we should observe a relative rise in the wage premium paid to qualified workers... We should bear in mind that, despite the rapid growth in employment for knowledge workers, their share constituted a mere 8.5 % of total employment in 1996.

Labour Shortages Persist in the SME Sector - Help Wanted: Update 2002
http://www.cfib.ca/research/reports/helpwanted2002_e.pdf
Estimated total job vacancies in Canada: 265,000. Generally, larger businesses had greater likelihood of an open job. Among firms with between 100 and 500 employees, almost 43 % had a current job vacancy and 29 % had a vacancy for more than four months. Among businesses with fewer than five employees, 18.4 % had at least one unfilled job and 14.7 % had one open for more than four months…  Although smaller businesses had a lower likelihood of experiencing an employee shortage, it represented a comparatively larger proportion of their workforces. Among respondents with fewer than five employees, about 10 % of jobs were vacant…

Where's the talent?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060221.wtalent
0221/BNStory/Business
The employment-services company asked… 1,000 Canadian employers about talent shortages…  In Canada, the top 10 jobs that employers are having difficulty filling are, ranked in order, sales representatives, customer service representatives and customer support, engineers, drivers, mechanics, labourers, chefs and cooks, electricians, skilled trades and nurses… Worldwide, employers having the most difficulty finding the right people to fill jobs are in Mexico, Canada and Japan. Globe and Mail, February 21, 2006

Hold the McJobs - Growth in well-paid positions contrasts notion that we're losing quality jobs
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060217.wxrjobs17/BNStory/Business/
Between January, 2005, and January, 2006, Canada saw a net total of 214,000 jobs created, the average hourly wage was $19.66. The three top-paying occupations, however, created a total of 279,000 jobs. Management positions (paying an average of $30.70 an hour) saw creation of 113,000 jobs, while natural and applied sciences (paying $27.70 an hour) created 32,000 jobs, and social sciences, education and government services (paying $25.74 an hour) saw 134,000 new jobs. The job losses were concentrated in occupations that pay less than the national average. Processing, manufacturing and utilities (paying $17.21 an hour on average) lost 120,000 jobs, primary industry lost 1,000 jobs (paying $18.14 an hour) and sales and service lost 43,000 jobs (paying $12.93 an hour)… Processing, manufacturing and utilities, generally, unionized jobs pay an average of $22.63 an hour while non-unionized jobs pay $18.24 an hour… Occupation aside, it was older workers and people in rural areas who have been the prime beneficiaries of the booming job market.

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Emerging Patterns in the Labour Market: A Reversal from the 1990s
http://www.statcan.ca/english/ads/11-010-XPB/pdf/feb06.pdf
Job growth: While construction growth was supported by Alberta’s continuing investment boom, strong gains were also posted in BC to support the infrastructure for trade with Asia and the beginning of construction for the 2010 Winter Olympics. In central Canada, losses in industrial demand were outweighed by gains in the public sector and strong commercial demand in Ontario, notably warehouses and office buildings. Toronto and Vancouver bucked the trend of weaker job growth in cities, with increases of over 2%. Despite fewer factory jobs, Toronto compensated with large gains in finance, education, trade and construction. Vancouver’s role as a hub in trade with Asia was reflected in large gains in trade and transportation, reinforced by a construction boom... The shift to full-time began after 2003: since then, full-time positions have risen 4%, while part-time jobs fell outright. This process accelerated last year, when full-time jobs rose 1.6% versus just 0.5% for part-time. This is in marked contrast with the 1990s, when parttime jobs rose more than twice as much (22.5% versus 8.5%).
Workers 55 years and over: Since 1996, the share of all job increases going to workers 55 years and over has risen steadily from 19% to 58% last year (it averaged less than 10% in the 1980s). This share will continue to rise, since the fastest growing segment of the population are 50 to 55 year olds... This greater education is reflected in the proportion of people aged 55 to 64 with some postsecondary education, which rose from about one quarter in 1990 to one-half last year as boomers moved into this cohort en masse.
Rural areas: The recovery of resources helped revive employment in many rural regions after years of declines, and was given a further boost by the recovery of farming last year. The upturn of the fortunes of these industries gave a fillip to demand for older workers, who already were taking a commanding place in the labour market as the population ages. Conversely, many urban areas were undercut by the loss of factory jobs. Canadian Economic Observer, February 2006

Canada faces a shortage of people who make things work
http://temagami.carleton.ca/jmc/cnews/02042004/n3.shtml
"University may have more exposure. But who do you think built the buildings and wired the lights on those campuses?" Josh MacKinnon will graduate from the University of Toronto this June with a B.A. and a $40,000 debt… Colin Geissberger is an apprentice electrician. He spends 10 weeks in school each year and has almost 9,000 hours of paid work experience. He will be fully certified in 2005 and debt-free… Geissberger's education costs about $1,000 a year; MacKinnon's, about $5,000… MacKinnon says he will spend several years after graduation struggling to support himself and pay off debts. Upon certification, Geissberger will have money in the bank and, within a few years, be earning an above-average income… MacKinnon’s degree may be overvalued and Geissberger’s certification under-appreciated, says Keith Lancastle, executive director of the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum (CAF). "There is a societal bias towards university in this country," he says.

Western Cities Enjoy Fastest Growing Economies
http://www.conferenceboard.ca/Default.htm
Vancouver will enjoy the fastest growing metropolitan economy in Canada in 2006, one of four western cities placing in the top five. Conference Board’s Metropolitan Outlook, Winter 2006

Help wanted in Western Canada as economy firing on all cylinders
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=e52782f9-06e2-45e9-87ce-ad69cf2ed4a1&k=23173
From the construction industry in Vancouver to the oilsands projects in northern Alberta, employers in Western Canada are strapped for workers and looking across Canada to fill vacancies… One challenge is that while job seekers might have qualifications on paper, they may not be ready to work in the oilfields… We were looking for 20 electricians and we did find some, but now that they've arrived and the company has employed them there is a lot of training that's going to be needed... National Post, January 28, 2006

Michelin will need skilled employees
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Business/479511.html
"I spent the first 30 years of my career finding jobs for people - for the next 30 years, the challenge will be finding people for jobs"… Ways must be found to transfer the knowledge of the senior workers to the newer ones… We’ve identified the skills and the positions that might be most deeply impacted by pending retirements and created a transition program… We’re making detailed work maps and manuals that can be used by the next generation of worker. We’re tapping into our most experienced workers to help develop the material and ensure their experience is passed on… The company also works with universities, the province’s community college systems and the Education Department to ensure they are aware of the needs in the workforce and can tailor their programs accordingly… Chronicle Herald, January 24, 2006

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Revenge of the geeks
http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/business/article.jsp?content=20060109_119265_119265
In all, 30,000 people found themselves out of work in the Ottawa area's high-tech sector between 2001 and 2004... Ottawa's technology industry has learned some hard lessons from the go-go years of the boom. A new wave of entrepreneurs is securing venture capital, creating jobs and making money.

Skill Shortages – Beyond the Headlines
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/ineas-aes.nsf/vwapj/srmei199907e.PDF/$FILE/srmei199907e.PDF
Unemployment rates for Managers & Administrators, Physical Scientists, Architect & Engineers, Computer Programmers, Medicine & Health Professionals, and Teachers are all well below the national average… Recent immigrants comprised just over 10% of all computer engineers in 1996. This group accounted for roughly one-third of all employment growth in this occupation over the 1991-96 period… There is evidence that domestic supply has begun to adjust through increasing enrolment in “high-tech” fields.

The Skilled Tradespeople Shortage
http://www.careersintrades.ca/media/default.asp?load=faqs01
By 2020, Canada could be short about 1 million workers…  Shortages are a particular problem in sectors such as natural resources, construction, manufacturing, and information technology. Skilled trades in high demand included heavy equipment operators, industrial mechanics, industrial electricians, building trades, steel and iron trades, automotive trades and welders… The problem is already evident in some sectors. In the steel industry, for example, 45% of all tradespersons are expected to retire by 2006. In the natural resources sector in 2001, 35% of the workforce were aged 45 and older and 9% were 55 and older. In the construction industry, 12% of the workers were aged 55 and older. Manufacturing showed similar results where 10% of the workers were 55 and over. In 2002, a third of private sector managers surveyed by the Canadian Labour and Business Centre expected that 10-25% of their workforce would retire over the next five years… Most immigrants settle in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, therefore employers outside these cities may continue to have difficulties in recruiting skilled tradespeople… Only about 25% of young Canadians enroll in university and another 25% choose college or trades. That leaves about 50% who enter the work force without the skills they need to compete for good jobs. These are students who are ill-prepared from high school for the world of work upon graduation. It's true that 70% of jobs require some form of post-secondary education but that doesn't mean university. In fact, only 11% of jobs require a degree.

Constructing the IT skills shortage in Canada: the implications of institutional discourse and practices for the participation of women
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=761853
Building on previous work, this paper explores systemic barriers to women in information technology professions by focusing on the ways in which institutional practices reinforce a definition of "information technology professional" that tends to exclude women… It examines the recent discourse on the "Information Technology Skills Shortage" in selected texts from industry, professional associations, academia and programs aimed at increasing the participation of women, focusing on the implications of discursive practices for the inclusion of women. In particular, it examines some of the apparent inconsistencies and contradictions which appear in the institutionalized discourse and practices…

High-tech Skills Shortage
http://www.perrymartel.com/articles/Skill_shortage.html
Canada has about 20,000 unfilled tech sector jobs… The United States has realized it must find more skilled workers and Canada has always been a logical place for U.S. companies to look…. The climate, the dollar, the tax rate and more opportunities to work with the most advanced technology make the United States a tough competitor for workers… The Canadian Advanced Technology Association has a project it calls Science City, through which it tries to understand what motivates people to go from one company and location to another… CATA has also developed a program called WorkInsight, trying to get people from around the world to submit their résumés to a database that Canadian employers can dip into…

Skills Shortage a Priority for Technician, Technologist Professions, Problem of certification among young technologists and engineers
http://www.cctt.ca/english/about/june04/president.pdf
10 % of Canada’s estimated 450,000 technicians and technologists are certified and belong to one of our provincial member associations. The number of engineering graduates seeking licensure has dropped in some cases to 20 % from 80 % in the 1970s and ‘80s. I am concerned that as Canadian jobs increasingly demand more training in a variety of skills, younger members of our professions are choosing not to seek the “stamp of approval” that shows they have what it takes to succeed. 

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Construction association lobbies Harper to loosen immigration laws
http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/politics/news/shownews.jsp?content=n0719109A
Canada needs crane operators, pipefitters and welders... The Canadian Construction Association sent an open letter to Harper on Wednesday saying relaxed immigration laws are needed to allow builders to hire needed workers to keep up with a building boom, especially in Western Canada. British Columbia was estimated to need 35,000 workers in the next several years to replace retiring workers and keep up with demand, the association said.

Nova Scotia’s Labour Market
In 2002, four out of ten Nova Scotian workers worked in businesses with less than 20 employees.
http://careeroptions.ednet.ns.ca/documents/CG_16-20.pdf
2005/2006: Economists are expecting employment growth to slow over the next few years, with an average of 2,600 new jobs being created each year. However, the baby boomers, hired in large numbers in the 1960s and 1970s, are now getting ready to retire. This turnover, likely averaging about 12,100 openings annually, will result in more job opportunities for new labour market entrants in almost all occupations. Even more jobs will become available as people change jobs or leave the labour market for other reasons. In fact, more than 7,500 Nova Scotians might be expected to find jobs in any given month.

Women and Trades and Technology
http://www.stjosephwomen.on.ca/trades.html
Less than 10% of the skilled trades workforce is comprised of women and they are concentrated in lower-paying occupations, such as hairstyling, child and youth work, horticulture and cooking... The average age of a fully qualified tradesperson is over 48 years old. That means that in the next seven to ten years, there is going to be almost a 100% turnover in many skilled trades... Immigrant women aged 25-44 who held a bachelor’s degree or higher were four times as likely to be unemployed as similarly educated Canadian-born women (17% compared to 4%)... 3 in 10 immigrant women live below Canada’s low income cut-off (LICO).

Canada faces skilled IT shortage
http://www.canadiancontent.net/commtr/article_651.html
Many of these IT Recruiters are simply asking too much. They all want a university degree, they all want massive amounts of experience, and most of them want to pay the minimum. Who, I ask, has a five-year university degree, ten years of experience, and is going to take an entry-level position that pays approximately $35,000… Another problem comes along when today's young people try to get positions in high tech industries. Without any "qualifications" you can go nowhere. Why? Today's skills are largely self-taught, thanks to the Internet. It seems, however, that companies are not willing to accept these skills. Even certifications from highly recognized companies such as Compaq or Dell are not taken seriously. No longer is training and certification provided on the job, but candidates are expected to pay the huge asking amounts for courses themselves, only to be overlooked as lacking qualifications.

Skills Competences Canada - Skills Shortages & Labour Market Trends in the Machining Industry
http://www.skillscanada.com/common/infocentre/research/machining-news-e.pdf
A study by the Automotive Parts Manufacturer’s Association (APMA) predicts a shortage of 14,680 machining industry jobs over the next 10 years… the average weekly earnings for all industries in Canada for the year 2000 was $626.45. While the average weekly earnings for individuals employed in manufacturing transportation equipment was $929.95...
Increase in anticipated shortages by skilled trade highlighted by responding members of the APMA, Fall 2000 survey:
Skilled trade in 2000       2002
Tool & Die 12.8%           21.1%
General Machinist 4.6%             11.0%
Mould Makers 12.8%     21.1%
27% of the skilled workforce is between 50 & 59, and 5% is over 60 years old.
If low wages are a draw to US business in Canada, certainly higher wages would be the calling card for many Canadian qualified machinists who are migrating to the United States.
The number of Canadian emigrants to the US was 98,000 in 1997, up from 17,000 in 1989.

Education and Training Needs Assessment - Saskatchewan Information Technology Sector Partnership
http://www.sasknetwork.ca/pdfs/lmi/exec_summary/Info%20Technology%20Ex.%20Summary.pdf
There is a perception within the IT industry that post-secondary education and training does not fully prepare students for jobs in the industry… 50 companies indicated they currently have vacant IT positions. These occur in the areas of programming, software development, network engineers, web-based application development, computer support and business analysis and design… Respondents indicated the major difficulties in recruiting IT employees are the lack of applicants with relevant experience, a lack of applicants with required skills, and the inability to offer competitive wages… The three most common difficulties experienced by the industry in recruiting are location, salary and training… Companies that were surveyed still recruit the majority of their employees from within the province… Due to the economic downturn in the high tech sector there has been a softening in the employment growth projections. In spite of this, there appears to be opportunities of growth as multi-task resource persons and sales personnel. These two occupations reflect a shift away from the more technical/programming type positions.

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Industry Profile - Information Technology
http://www.sasknetwork.ca/html/Home/lmi/sectorstudies/ssinfotech.htm
The Canadian IT industry had revenues (industry-wide income) of $100.2 billion in 1997. Services accounted for 72% of all IT revenues, significantly more than the goods or products part of the industry. From 1990 to 1997 revenues grew at a compound annual rate of 8.5%. During this period the number of jobs in the IT industry increased by 23.1%. Total employment in the Canadian IT sector in 1997 was 481,046. Most of the gains in employment have occurred in software and computer services. Canada shares an IT industry skill shortage with the rest of the globe. Canada’s skill shortage has been affected by a ‘brain drain’ of technology workers who are enticed to the U.S. by higher wages and benefits… Most full-time (46%) and part-time (35%) workers in the IT industry are in the 25 to 34 age group. Men dominate in this field. It’s estimated that 20% of IT workers are women, 1.75% are Aboriginal people, 1.2% are people with disabilities, and 4.4% are visible minorities.

Wanted: More skilled labour, and quick
http://www.immigrate.net/immigrationnews/News_List.asp?CategoryID=1
I have a hell of a time attracting robotics technicians… Our business is growing, I have been actively looking for two or three [of them] for the last year and a half… We are not a glamorous high-tech plant, and there are larger employers who can simply afford to pay more… If they work at my plant, they'll get $20 an hour, but across the street, they are paying about $33 an hour… Many Canadian manufacturers face a tough time finding skilled workers as the front-end of the baby boomers near retirement over the coming years; global competition heats up for highly trained immigrant workers; and fewer younger people become attracted to the sector... globeandmail.com

Human Resources Issues Facing Cultural SMEs
http://www.canadianheritage.gc.ca/progs/ac-ca/pubs/profile/6_e.cfm
While skilled and creative talent is important to cultural companies, our research indicates that cultural SMEs do not consider human resources to be a key barrier to growth. While some firms indicated that attraction and retention of experienced personnel was an issue, in general, SMEs across all of the cultural industries indicated that they did not have difficulty finding talented and skilled people for their companies. The only key skill shortages were in the areas of finance and business management.

Emerging Talent Shortages Could Bring Commerce to Its Knees
http://www.cthrb.ca/English/Newsletter/SpecialNov4News03.html
The two most critical issues are skills shortages in key occupational areas and underutilization of human resources… we are wasting our most precious resource - brainpower - at a time when talent is in short supply… Human Resources professionals today are fighting a war for relevancy, where they must move from a position of being under-recognized and under-utilized, to a new plateau where their value has been raised and they are recognized as leaders, not managers… HR professionals are facing an upheaval in the talent situation, but their efforts to move forward are being handicapped by a world view that has not changed. The past war for any talent is now a war for the best talent. Finding professionals who have either rare skills or rare capabilities is now the key to organizational success…

Is There a Current Skill Shortage? Expert Panel on Skills Report - Advisory Council on Science and Technology
http://acst-ccst.gc.ca/skills/finalrep_html/p3_e.html#f1
On the whole, we believe that growth prospects in Canadian industry are most vulnerable to a shortage of individuals who combine management and essential skills and attributes with strong technical skills. This important finding highlights a qualitative dimension of the skills challenge that is not new, but has received scant attention in the popular media. Clearly, economic and technological change and the growing complexity of work sets a higher standard across a broad spectrum of skill requirements. Therefore, simply convincing more of our young people to complete high school and enrol in post-secondary studies will not get to the heart of the skills challenge. In addition, we should re-examine the elementary, secondary and post-secondary curriculums to ensure that young people acquire both technical and essential skills over the course of their education. We also need to focus on both the acquisition of essential skills and of technical skills by the current work force. 2005

Leaders wanted
http://www.marketingmag.ca/magazine/current/salary_benchmarks
/article.jsp?content=20061009_70792_70792
Five to eight years ago, companies created a huge gap in the workforce following severe downsizing, flattening of organizational structures and a general decline in hiring and training. Today this has resulted in a severe shortage of quality, qualified candidates to fill supervisory positions. Good supervisors are at a premium and are demanding higher than normal salaries... Agencies are struggling also to find good senior level executives and account directors - one of the things they're demanding is candidates who are multi-disciplined. Marketing Magazine, October 2006

Economic Rebound Brings Crisis in Talent Supply
http://www.cthrb.ca/English/Newsletter/NewsletterJan06.html
The talent market has changed. Potential employees are different in their expectations. There is a disenchanted employment pool. Short-term job expectations have taken over from long-term patterns of the past. Compensation models need to change to reflect these new expectations… Current talent shortage in Canada in two highly significant sectors: construction and tourism: there is a need for partnerships and cooperation across all sectors. We need to think nationally and act regionally. Construction is also facing the challenge of replacing an aging workforce, where it is projected that most skilled trades workers and operations and maintenance people will be retiring or preparing to retire over the next 15 years… The tourism sector that employs more than 1.6-million people, and was expanding rapidly is threatened by a looming “zero per cent” growth in the labour force by 2010… We are enormously reliant on younger workers, which are a workforce segment that is declining rapidly. We need 90,000 new workers in the next two years, making the labour shortage the biggest challenge the industry has ever had to face.

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Not alone in feeling the staffing crunch
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Business/534728.html
Wages are part of the problem, but she noted that she pays more than minimum wage for jobs like dishwashing and still has trouble finding experienced people whom she doesn’t have to train. They’re hard to find at $9 or $10 an hour... line cooks go west, where wages are higher... 66 % of Canadian employers are struggling to find qualified sales representatives, customer support workers, labourers, drivers, cooks, drivers, mechanics, electricians and engineers. Chronicle Herald, October 2006

Vacancies Ahead
http://www.marketingmag.ca/magazine/current/salary_benchmarks
/article.jsp?content=20061009_70792_70792
So what's hot? Perhaps the better question is what's not. In the early '90s it was telco; in the latter '90s it was technology. In the earlier part of this decade it was pharmaceuticals but today it seems all the sectors are hot... Other experts name telecommunications, technology, entertainment, CRM, natural resources, health care, financial services and pharmaceutical. In addition, retail, namely specialty or new improved chains, are going strong. Marketing Magazine, October 2006

Venture Capital in Canada, a Maturing Industry with Distinctive Features and New Challenges
http://www.ryerson.ca/~c5davis/publications/VC_in_Canada-CDavis-31-12-01.pdf
Canada’s improvement in competitive performance in the 1990s is attributable primarily to improvement in macroeconomic factors, with bottlenecks and disconnects remaining in the microeconomic foundations of competitiveness… Canada has about one million firms, of which only 0.2 % have 500 or more employees. About 75% of Canadian firms have fewer than five employees and about 22% have between 5 and 50 employees. In Canada as elsewhere, smaller firms account for the largest proportional increase in employment... Small firms created more than three-quarters of the net employment increase observed among all firms…  In 1997 businesses with fewer than 5 employees accounted for 26% of the gross increase in employment, but represented less than 9% of total employment. Businesses with less than 50 employees created 57% of the gross increase in employment but represented only 32% of total paid employment. Looking forward at 2001, the Canadian small business sector expected to create jobs at an average rate of 4.5%.

Looking to bag employees: Alberta grocery chain offers incentives to attract N.S. workers
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/475710.html
An Alberta grocery store chain is looking to fill as many as 100 full-time positions available in Calgary, Edmonton, Grande Prairie and Fort McMurray, among other communities. In return for a one-year commitment, Westfair Foods Ltd. is promising to pay airfare for new employees and their partners, up to $2,000 in moving expenses and their first month’s rent."We’re hiring all full-time and we have positions available all over Alberta"... According to Statistics Canada, average hourly wages rose 7.5 per cent in Alberta last year. The prairie province’s jobless rate last month was only 4.1 per cent... "Any business in Alberta is facing the same challenges with recruiting, so if you go into any service business or any burger joint, you’re going to find help-wanted signs"... Annual salaries for supervisory positions at Westfair start at $30,000 to $35,000. Clerks working in produce sections or stocking shelves make about $12 per hour — $25,000 per year. Chronicle Herald, January 8, 2006

Earnings trends in the knowledge-based economy
http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/81-004-XIE/2005001/earn.htm
Trends in earnings differ markedly across age groups and between men and women. In each of the low-, medium- and high-knowledge sectors, female university graduates, young and older alike, experienced faster wage growth than their male counterparts. Meanwhile, the actual earnings of young male university graduates either stagnated or fell slightly while those of male high school graduates dropped sharply…While specific labour shortages in narrowly defined sectors may exist, the wage patterns of highly educated workers reveals little evidence of a widespread imbalance between the demand and supply of highly skilled workers in Canada… Trends over the past two decades have placed male high school graduates at a distinct disadvantage in the labour market. And prime-aged male university graduates have not fared much better… It might be expected that growth in the labour supply of women in specific fields of study will have a negative impact on the trend in men’s wages in the same fields of study - a question for further research.

The Changing Labour Force Participation of Canadians, 1969-1996
http://www11.hrsdc.gc.ca/en/cs/sp/hrsdc/arb/publications/research/1999-000074/page02.shtml
Poor macroeconomic conditions in the 1990s have been unambiguously bad for participation and income, but this can be reversed if and when the Canadian economy recovers to full employment. Also worrisome is the high labour force dropout rate among the low-skilled, which can only be reduced by education, training or other long-term structural intervention. Second, the welfare implications of other participation-reducing factors, such as minimum wage increases, restricted access to unemployment insurance benefits and more generous public pensions, are controversial. To decide whether those developments are good or bad requires a value judgment about the relative merits of their implications for efficiency and equity. To the extent that they result from free choice, the rising school enrolment rate and the stabilization of women's participation rate should be viewed as welfare-enhancing. In particular, it is worth pointing out that students who participate less in the labour force today are likely to participate more, and more productively, later... We do not anticipate that aggregate labour force participation in Canada will return to its late-1980s level in the foreseeable future. Minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and social assistance policies seem to have reached a stable plateau, and any changes in pension policy will have effects only over the long run.

The Current State of Canadian Family Finances
http://www.vifamily.ca/library/cft/state03.html
Beginning in 1997, the Canadian economy managed to create at least 300,000 new jobs each year, with 2001 being the exception when "only" 167,000 new jobs were created. However, the quality of the jobs created has diminished. Between January 2000 and November 2003, the number of part-time jobholders jumped by 12.3%. This is double the rate of increase for full-time jobholders. Earnings have also been held back by an oversupply of workers compared to the demand. The unemployment rate remained at about 7.5% in late 2003 compared to about 6.5% in early 2000. While there are certainly selected shortages in some job classifications, the labour market remains a buyer's market where workers are competing for the available jobs. - 2003 Report.

Doctor shortage to increase by 2015 without foreign-trained physicians
http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/politics/news/shownews.jsp?content=n082802A
The study urges governments to allow more qualified Canadian students access to medical training to ease the reliance on foreign doctors. The doctor shortage has grown in recent years after provincial governments in the 1980s cut back the number of people allowed into medical school. Macleans 2006

The U.S. Economy Continues to Demand Workers for Less-Skilled Jobs
http://www.ailf.org/ipc/special_report/2005_bridging.pdf
As the number of less-skilled jobs continues to grow, it will become increasingly difficult for employers to find native-born workers, especially younger ones, with the educational levels that best correspond to those jobs. In this sense, immigrant workers are a vital complement to a native-born labor force that is growing older and better educated... The shifting demographics of the native- born workforce would present less of an economic challenge if the number of less-skilled jobs were not expanding. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that a significant share of new jobs and job openings during 2002–2012 will occur in industries that employ large numbers of workers with lower levels of formal education or training.

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Immigrant occupations

Labour market data shows critical skills shortage - and skills going unused 2003
http://www.ccsd.ca/pr/2003/feb11census.htm
The lack of workers poised to replace retirees in medical, educational, and skilled trade professions points to the need for national and provincial skills and training strategies. Canada has abandoned the national strategy it began in the late 1980s and downloaded training responsibilities to provincial governments. Most provinces have also cut back their spending on provincial training strategies. And, as evidenced by high unemployment among qualified younger workers, too many employers just do not have adequate strategies for bringing new workers on board. We need a more responsible and concerted strategy which must involve governments, community organizations, and employers in the private and public sectors.
The unemployment rate of recent immigrants aged 24 to 54 was twice that of the Canadian population, 12.1% compared to 6.4% - despite the fact that immigrants are almost twice as likely as native Canadians to have a university degree (21% compared to 12%). Immigrants are an important labour resource for Canada, accounting for 70% of the total labour force growth during the last decade. Their present unemployment rate is in stark contrast to 1981 figures, when new immigrants had employment rates virtually identical to native born Canadians. Female immigrants were even more likely to face unemployment than their male counterparts, according to the 2001 census.

Immigrant Occupations: Recent Trends and Issues
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/research/papers/occupations/occupations-d.html
Most Common Occupations: Computer Programmers, Computer Systems Analysts, Electrical Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Civil Engineers, Accountants and Management Professionals are included in the 1996-2000 and 2000 top 10 occupations list. In the year 2000, computer engineers, chemical engineers and financial analysts rounded out the top 10, but for the period 1996-2000, Secretaries, Biologists and Cooks rounded out the top 10. Not only are immigrants increasingly likely to have higher skill levels and more credentials, they are also more likely to be trained scientists and engineers. The number of applicants intended for business and finance occupations pale in comparison to levels recorded for natural and applied science occupations. Professional occupations in natural and applied sciences have become the uncontested dominant occupation of recent immigrants during the 1990s.  Since 1993, in particular, this category has steadily outpaced other intended occupations, especially those in administration and sales and services. This is a reflection of new selection criteria that gave more weight to education, and linked occupations to labour market demand...

Capitalizing on Canada's diversity is key to nation's future prosperity
http://www.rbc.com/newsroom/20051020diversity.html
Without a talented workforce, Canadian businesses will be unable to achieve corporate strategies for innovation and growth. The report suggests that immigrants, women and baby boomers approaching retirement will need to play more significant roles in the country's workforce, as Canada needs to capitalize on the broader economic benefits that a more diverse population has to offer… If immigrants and women were employed at their level of education and skills training, earning equal pay to men born in Canada, personal incomes in Canada would increase by 21 per cent or $174 billion, and 1.6 million more working-age Canadians would be employed… RBC Special Report, October 20, 2005

Tapping Immigrants’ Skills
http://www.irpp.org/choices/archive/vol11no1.pdf
Reitz, Jeffrey G. 2005. Tapping Immigrants’ Skills: New Directions for Canadian Immigration Policy in the Knowledge Economy. IRPP Choices 11, no. 1.

Opening Doors for Internationally Trained Individuals
http://www.citizenship.gov.on.ca/english/citdiv/apt/bdoftrade/
The challenges in acquiring the workforce the industries need to expand and succeed are widespread not only here in Ontario, but also elsewhere in Canada, and in jurisdictions around the world. If you aren't yet feeling the pressure to replace retiring "baby boomers" and recruit new employees with the skills and expertise you need to stay competitive, you soon will. A survey by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce reported that 52 per cent of skilled trades people are expected to retire within the next 15 years. According to StatsCan, immigrants will account for almost all of the workforce growth in Ontario by 2011. That's a very significant projection, and one that will force us to re-evaluate how we integrate immigrants into our workforce… Overview of what our government has been doing to help build the workforce you will need for the future...   and initiatives we have taken to... Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities - for the Toronto Board of Trade, 2004

Jobs and Labour Market Policy: A Strategic Scan of International Research - 1996
http://www11.hrsdc.gc.ca/en/cs/sp/hrsdc/edd/reports/1996-000420/page06.shtml
Explaining Job Quality Trends: Hypotheses and Evidence
To the extent that immigrant workers are disproportionately unskilled (or required to work in unskilled jobs because their credentials are not recognized), it is possible for large inflows of immigrant labour to have the effect of "crowding" the low end of the labour market, thus bidding down the wages of unskilled Canadian workers and increasing inequality… Like high-school dropouts, very highly skilled workers may also be overrepresented in immigrant flows to Canada and the U.S. thus, in addition to depressing wages at the very bottom, immigration could also work to compress the very top of the wage distribution...

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Labour and Skills Shortage
http://www.energy.ca/users/getdownload.asp?DownloadID=218
Shifts in global markets and organizational change have led to continuous change in skill requirements… Renewable energy sources such as solar, biomass and wind will add to the demand for skills in the future, especially since they require specialized expertise which is not readily available in the energy labour pool… The traditional energy sector employee is a white male and that there is under representation among females, Aboriginal peoples, immigrants and visible minorities. With respect to Aboriginals, the industry is slightly ahead of the national average in terms of employment levels: 3.6% versus 2.4%. The picture with other groups is less encouraging: 21.9% female employment vs. national average of 46.6%; 11.9% immigrant employment vs. 20.5% national average; 5.7% visible minority employment vs. 12.4% national average…

Skills Agenda 2004
http://www.chamber.ca/cmslib/general/S042.pdf
Recommendations: Skills and Apprenticeships; Integrating Immigrants into the Workforce

Canada Faces Growing Competition for Immigrants to Ease Skills Crisis
http://www.asiapacificbusiness.ca/apbn/pdfs/bulletin199.pdf
In fact, some studies suggest that there is no overall shortage of skilled labour in Canada… At least in some sectors, such as nursing, education, and the certain trades, shortages are already apparent. A more nuanced picture: as some occupations move toward shortages -- such as physical science professionals (physicists and chemists); librarians; plumbers, pipe fitters and gas fitters; heavy equipment operators -- other job areas are moving toward a surplus, including childcare and home support workers; textile machine operators; and agricultural and horticultural workers.

Race Relations Tensions – Sources of discrimination in the accreditation process
http://www.ohrc.on.ca/english/consultations/race-policy-dialogue-paper-js.shtml
A study of 404 Indo and Chinese immigrant professionals residing in the Vancouver area found only 18% of them at the time of the study worked in their own profession in Canada (1997). Only 6% agreed that the provincial governments had conducted a fair recognition of their foreign credentials. When asked about the possible sources of discrimination in the accreditation process, 65% reported colour, 69% nationality or ethnic origin and 79% the inability to speak English. The situation is not too different in Ontario.

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Recruitment of Foreign Nurses: Canada
http://www.pulsehr.com/Foreign_Nurse_Recruitment.html#Recruitment%20of%20Foreign%20Nurses:%20Canada
Nursing Shortages Facts and Information; Licensing Process for Foreign Nurses

Bringing Employers into the Immigration Debate (2004)
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/press/speech-sgro/debate.html
“Research tells us that many newcomers have the skills businesses will need to compete in today’s knowledge economy — with 60 % of immigrants coming to Canada in 2001, for example, possessing a university degree, compared to 43 % of Canadian born adults. What’s more, a higher proportion of newcomers than native born Canadians are educated and skilled in areas such as computer science, engineering and natural science occupations — all occupations critical for today’s leading businesses. Their performance in the economy, however, suggests that many newcomers face severe barriers when it comes to fully participating in Canada’s national growth and are unable to find appropriate employment commensurate with their education and skills. The Conference Board of Canada estimates that this underemployment costs the Canadian economy from $3.5 to $5.0 billion annually. Many researches suggest that this problem is getting worse — not better. At the same time, groups like the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses report that the future growth of small and medium-sized businesses is being hampered by skill shortages — and that these shortages exist across provinces, industries and all types of firms… Research from the Public Policy Forum hints at the importance of language training… Research from Statistics Canada also suggests there’s a link between language skills and immigrant outcomes — with one study indicating that nearly one-half of the current earnings disadvantage among university educated immigrant workers would disappear if they had the same average literacy scores as non-immigrants.”

Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program
http://www.workrights.ca/News/News+011204.htm?page=1%2F27%2F2004+7%3A40%3A26+PM&Prev10=
Desperate for work, Mexicans and Caribbeans come to Canada and the US, legally and illegally, to work on farms to produce cheap foods bathed in toxic chemicals… Canada has profited immensely from the plight of migrants of the south. The low wages of migrant workers has proliferated a multimillion dollar agricultural industry in Canada. Despite the importance of migrant workers to our economy and food production, they are among the most marginalized labour force in Canada… These workers (some 17,000 of them) are not protected by Canadian health and safety regulations, overtime and statutory holiday legislation, or basic freedom of association and collective bargaining rights. They can be fired and sent home on the spot, without any justification necessary or recourse available. They are required to live on the property of the employer, and have no claim to immigration, even after twenty years of living in Canada for eight months of the year.

Migrant workers in Canada: a review of the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program - CSAWP
http://www.nsi-ins.ca/english/pdf/MigrantWorkers_Eng_Web.pdf
The migrants spend an average of 17 to 20 weeks in Canada each year, performing manual work on some 1,800 farms in nine provinces… The number of resident Canadians willing to work in horticulture declined 25 % during the 1990s. This leaves the offshore workers as a key component of those sectors in which they are concentrated, sustaining investment, exports and the employment of Canadians. In 2000, Caribbean and Mexican workers represented around 18 % of the total horticultural work force in Canada but an estimated 53 % of employment in the sectors using CSAWP or 45 % in terms of person-hours… With a large number of countries increasingly dependent on foreign migrant workers to meet their agricultural labour needs, the project set out to identify the “good practices” involved in the Canadian program which might be replicated elsewhere, as well as areas for improvement.

Asian Skilled-Immigration Flows to Canada - A Supply-Side Analysis
http://www.asiapacific.ca/analysis/pubs/pdfs/immigration5_14oct03.pdf
Key issues in the Canada-Asia relationship, country specific papers — on China, Japan and India. This paper breaks new ground by eschewing the traditional “demand-side” view of immigration and focuses instead on the supply side of Canada’s future intake of highly skilled immigrants from Asia. Specifically, it questions a central assumption of Canada’s postwar immigration policy: that there exists an infinite supply of highly skilled immigrants willing to wait in queue to enter Canada. Will the supply of highly skilled immigrants to Canada become more limited in the near future? In answering this question, this paper looks at demographic trends in Asia over the next 25 years and forecasts the potential gross supply of skilled immigrants to Canada. Next, it reviews the likely impact of Canada’s 2002 Immigration Act on the future supply and skill composition of these immigrants. Finally, in order to forecast the net supply of Asian immigrants, it examines the size and composition of recent Canadian emigration to Hong Kong. Ultimately, this paper argues that these three forces — demographics, a restrictive Canadian immigration policy, and return migration — will reduce the supply of skilled immigrants from Asia over the next three decades.

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Connecting supply and demand

Shaping Canada's Economic Vision
http://www.ic.gc.ca/cmb/welcomeic.nsf/503cec39324f7372852564820068b211/
85256a5d006b97208525707c004a80f4!OpenDocument
And, while Canada has one of the most educated workforces in the world, and we are making much progress in attracting world-class researchers, we fall short in certain critical areas. We do not, for example, produce nearly as many postgraduates in mathematics, the sciences, engineering and business as does the U.S. The U.S. meanwhile is increasingly threatened by the dramatic growth of the math/sciences/engineering talent pool in India and China. They too have a challenge. For Canada, for the good of our future prosperity, we need to focus on this weakness and we need to fix it. We need to produce and educate more of our own math and science grads. And we need better, more efficient, integration of trained and skilled immigrants into the economic mainstream of Canada… Another challenge, in spite of a variety of research and development incentives here in Canada, the R&D performance of private sector companies is mediocre by international standards. Actually, it's beyond mediocre, it's embarrassing. Recognizing this weakness, I appointed a six-member Expert Panel on Commercialization… to prepare… recommendations relating to research, innovation, venture capital and other measures that can contribute to a deeply embedded Canadian capacity to innovate. - D. Emerson, Minister of Industry, September 14, 2005, Halifax

Connecting Labour Market Supply & Demand
http://www.labour.gov.bc.ca/skills/2010_HRP_Committee_Final_Report_Final_Version.pdf
Skill development and placement programs: Increasing employers’ (small as well as medium-sized enterprises and large corporations) receptivity to job candidates from target populations that may otherwise be overlooked needs to be a key part of maximizing 2010-related opportunities. Employers indicated that success depends largely on how close a match there is between the attitudes, knowledge and skills of job candidates and the actual requirements of the jobs for which there are openings. The Committee encourages agencies that represent and serve members of groups under-represented in the labour market to adopt new strategies or enhance existing ones to ensure a “demand” lens in their programs and services: Within each agency serving prospective workers, review current and proposed training programs against available labour market data on projected demands, anticipated worker supply, shortfalls and surpluses; Rigorously analyze the value of program offerings and identify changes needed (in specific programs and/or resource allocations generally) to correspond to anticipated skills shortages; Include demand-side representatives on advisory boards… It is important that such initiatives go beyond the analysis at the occupational level by focusing on generic or core skills and skill sets that will be in high demand…

Canada Urgently Needs to Develop a Comprehensive National Skills Strategy
http://www.georgianc.on.ca/archives/2005/11/pathways.php
Initiatives implemented by other countries such as the United Kingdom and New Zealand with similar problems:
Instituting a national culture of lifelong learning;
Maximizing the opportunities for those in the workforce to upgrade their skills;
Better forecasting of the evolving skills required by employers so we can be more proactive in determining responsive strategies for skills development;
Adequate funding for industry training;
Acquiring a sound foundation of the basic skills of literacy and numeracy.

Knowledge Matters: Skills and Learning for Canadians
http://www11.sdc.gc.ca/sl-ca/doc/summary.shtml
The knowledge-based economy means an ever-increasing demand for a well-educated and skilled workforce in all parts of the economy and in all parts of the country… There is a looming demographic crunch that means our future labour supply will be inadequate to meet the demands of the economy… Our learning system must be strengthened if we are to meet the skills and labour force demands of the next decades.

The World and Canada: Trends Reshaping Our Future
http://www.conferenceboard.ca/pandp/
This tenth anniversary edition of the Conference Board’s flagship socio-economic report, Performance and Potential 2005-06, takes a critical look at Canada’s performance and potential. It evaluates our progress since the mid-1990s and examines the global trends that are reshaping our future prosperity and well-being.

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Help Wanted: Long-term vacancies a major small business challenge
http://www.cfib.ca/research/reports/rr3018.pdf
Vacancy rates by sector, long-term vacancy rates by province, concern over the shortage of qualified labour. Canadian Federation of Independent Business 2006

Have Work. Will Hire: Industries Experiencing Skills Shortage Look for Assistance
http://www.workplace.ca/newsletter/2005m10-Perspective.html
Working in an industry which is experiencing a skills shortage across the nation means you have to get creative with your recruiting practices...
For the past 6 months I have been attempting to get some guidance or assistance from the Canadian Immigration Department on how to recruit international candidates. What I have run into has been a maze of names, numbers and emails of people within the department, and even some from other agencies, who apparently don’t have a clue how to help Canadian businesses address the skills shortage in the trades industry... Unfortunately, we in the North American society still see construction or labor work as limiting and only suitable as a “job” as opposed to a career. Our European neighbors however, see construction and trades in a totally different light, and are therefore not running into the recruitment challenges we are facing. So we are left with little choice but to try to entice Europeans to come and work in Canada in the construction trade which in all honesty they can do at home.

Youth Employment and Skills Development in Canada at Crossroads
http://www.conferenceboard.ca/education/reports/pdfs/Youth%20Sounding%20Board%20Report%20DRAFT.pdf
We do not always do a good job of linking education with the local economy and do not prepare our youth for labour market opportunities in their own back yard. As Canadians, we tend to invest our public dollars in education and in labour market programs in “flavour of the month” options. We do not commit to sustainable innovation, which requires long-term economic planning, evaluation of outcomes and impacts, and the retargeting of objectives… We do not co-ordinate labour market research with educational reform, even in the most basic ways, for example, by encouraging students to apply what they have learned to the context of the workplace, so they can see its relevance… We have a fixation with the forms of federalism and do not co-ordinate the application of federal and provincial resources for the benefit of individual Canadian youth. We commit provincial resources to youth when they are in school and provide federal relief when they are unemployed, but we do not invest in methods to ease the transition from school to work, which would help to circumvent the cycle of youth unemployment in Canada… In Canada we do not engage employers as effectively as we might in business–education partnerships. Much more emphasis needs to be placed on leveraging our collective investments in youth in ways that move youth directly into the labour market and/or develop youth skills and show more value to participating employers. The Conference Board of Canada, 2002

Canadian Council on Learning
http://www.ccl-cca.ca/english/news/speech_140905-3.asp
What Canada is potentially facing in the coming decade and beyond is not just a labour skills shortage, but a shortage of workers. We have to ask ourselves, what are we prepared to do to ensure that the workers of today and those of tomorrow have the proper skills and training to maintain Canada’s economic competitiveness, and sustain a high quality of life for its citizens?

Linking Economic Strategies and Ontario Colleges
http://www.collegequarterly.ca/2004-vol07-num03-summer/summers_drea.html
The most important shortages are not willing job applicants, but very specific skills. The missing skills are often taught in the very practical vocational programs that focus on particular software, equipment, materials or business skills that are needed to implement and commercialize new technology… The colleges need to make their case by referring to the current language and concepts that dominate policy discussions… They have a natural advantage through their tradition of contact with employers. The practical, vocational natures of their programs place them closer to the job market. Continued careful research in the areas of return on investment, productivity and skill shortages will make these advantages clearer to government. While there is extensive competition for limited public sector resources, the good news is that Ontario's colleges are strongly positioned to positively influence governments' decisions regarding resource allocation.

Canada Urgently Needs to Develop a Comprehensive National Skills Strategy
http://www.georgianc.on.ca/archives/2005/11/pathways.php
Initiatives implemented by other countries such as the United Kingdom and New Zealand with similar problems: Instituting a national culture of lifelong learning; Maximizing the opportunities for those in the workforce to upgrade their skills; Better forecasting of the evolving skills required by employers so we can be more proactive in determining responsive strategies for skills development; Adequate funding for industry training; Acquiring a sound foundation of the basic skills of literacy and numeracy.

Skills/Compétences Canada®
http://www.skillscanada.com/en/
National, not-for-profit organization that actively promotes careers in skilled trades and technologies to Canadian youth. Along with our private sector partners, we are helping to secure Canada’s future skilled labour needs. Since its inception in 1989, S/CC has evolved into a pan-Canadian organization offering skilled trades and technology competitions at the regional, provincial/territorial, national and international levels as well as other awareness programs for thousands of young Canadians. Skills/Compétences Canada is also a founding partner of the national awareness campaign, "Skilled Trades: A Career You Can Build On".

Skills Shortage Solutions
http://www.vitesse.ca/employers/skill_shortage.asp
It is not necessarily a shortage of Canadian workers - but a shortage of workers with the appropriate skill sets. 'Currency' equates to employability in today's workforce. Given the pace of change - this equates to a constant necessity for upskilling and invites companies and individuals to address skill gaps with action.

Building Careers in Technology - Strategic Planning Conference, BC (2005)
http://www.asttbc.org/conference/BCT.Report1P.pdf
It became abundantly clear that BC faces a major challenge, in fact a looming crisis, as it was clearly articulated that the demand by employers for technologists and technicians, especially in career fields such as electronics, is much greater than the supply. Technology is a major facet of all aspects of a modern economy and the demand for technologists and technicians in BC will continue to increase, especially as we approach 2010. Employers are demanding more technologists and technicians, yet programs to train these future employees are being closed due to low enrolments and increasing costs. It also became clear that systems need to be developed that will allow immigrants the opportunity to quickly become employed in their skill field.

Unemployed immigrant doctors a waste
http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=474
While the province is suffering from a doctor shortage, more than 160 foreign medical graduates in Alberta are unable to practice medicine because of barriers to licensing procedures, says a new study based out of the University of Alberta…"With the current shortage of 400 physicians, we believe an immediate, aggressive decision on how to train international medical graduates and make them available to Albertans must be looked at now," he passed his qualifying exam eight years ago and has been waiting since then to land a residency of his own. "  2000

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Ignoring foreign talent costs billions
http://www.hrmguide.net/canada/jobmarket/foreign_credentials.htm
World Education Services contend that the cost of providing income support to 5,000 foreign-trained workers would be $60 million, and retraining 10,000 people would cost taxpayers $10 million. But the Canadian Federation of Independent Business has estimated that there are 265,000 vacant jobs among small and medium-sized enterprises in Canada. 186,000 of these have been vacant for four months or more while nearly 40,000 highly skilled immigrants have been arriving in Ontario annually for years... Studies... all highlight the need to make better use of the talents of immigrant professionals and skilled workers. This is particularly important in sectors like technology, health care provision and engineering where there are skills shortages… 58% of immigrants to Canada in 2000 were either skilled workers or professionals. Many were selected by an immigration policy based on education - but many employers do not accept their credentials. "The fact is that over 75% of foreign credentials in the engineering, health care and IT fields we evaluated in the past year are equivalent to or exceed Canadian standards," offers Owen. 2002

Chamber Addresses Federal Politicians Silence on Critical Labour Shortage Issue
http://www.calgarychamber.com/abcalcoc/doc.nsf/files/7E208654BB274D1A872570DF005A3B80/$file/
Labour%20Shortage%20Political%20Leaders%20Letter_Final_Dec%2022,%202005.pdf
Alberta’s economy will create 90,000 new jobs over the next five years (2005-2010); The Calgary region will create 158,000 jobs by 2010; With labour participation rates near full employment, it is unclear where the Calgary economy will find the workers to fill those jobs; In 36 of the 53 major occupations the unemployment rate is less than 3%; Alberta Government projects retirements will create a deficit of 86,000 workers over the next 10 years even if we fully employ all people of working age.

Recruiting and Retaining the Next Generation of Workers from Colleges and Institutes
http://www.ppforum.ca/common/assets/publications/en/smart_workplace_2.pdf
If the future workplace can be characterized by keeping pace with rapidly changing skill needs and evolving technology, then employers need to develop new strategies around recruitment and retention of the coveted knowledge worker…  At the same time, those entering the workforce should be prepared to manage change and to recognize that education is a life-long personal responsibility. Working smart includes making contributions through professional and volunteer networks.

What We Heard From Industry Sectors
http://www.innovation.gc.ca/gol/innovation/site.nsf/en/in02174.html
Government cannot create innovation. Once it removes barriers, it will be up to individuals and organizations to create innovations... Producing more science graduates is one of the main hurdles Canada needs to overcome to fuel innovation in the biotechnology sector. Success in achieving this priority will depend on the ability of government and industry to partner on the common goal of encouraging students to study science.

 

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Canadian business

Small Business Profile
http://www.cfib.ca/research/reports/rr3011.pdf
An Overview of Canada’s Small and Mid-sized Business Sector

Wage Watch—A Comparison of Public-Sector and Private-Sector Wages 2003
http://www.cfib.ca/research/reports/Wage_Watch_2003.pdf
The number of federal employees has climbed more than 20 % over the last four years. Currently, in terms of employment growth, public administration is experiencing the largest gains in Canada—6.1 % in the first eight months of 2003. The trend is a return to large expensive governments and increased bureaucracy. Equally important to total employment are the wages and benefits paid to public employees relative to the private sector. 

Emerging patterns in the labour market: A reversal from the 1990s
http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/060216/d060216c.htm
Company size: Mining and oil and gas are dominated by large multinationals. With double-digit growth in these industries, and the public sector expanding steadily, large establishments (more than 500 employees) again drove employment gains, up 6%. Medium-sized employers (20 to 500 employees) were next with a 1.1% gain. Small firms with less than 20 employees continued to lag, as they have for most of this decade. This is a reversal from the previous decade, when small firms dominated job growth, especially in the information and communication technology sector. From The Daily.

Business Transition - A Literature Review 2004
http://www.cfib.ca/research/reports/succession_0405_e.pdf
The economy as whole is a major stakeholder with respect to the successful transfer of businesses. Given the current demographics of business owners, a high failure rate of their businesses and postsuccession will exert great impact on employment, economic output, and business formation in the future.    

Gross domestic product by industry - April 2006
http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/060629/d060629a.htm
The Canadian economy advanced by 0.1% in April, matching the pace of the previous month. Overall, services output rose by 0.3%, sustained mainly by growth in retail and wholesale trade, the financial sector, and in transportation and warehousing. In contrast, declines in utilities, construction, manufacturing, as well as in mining, oil and gas exploration resulted in a 0.3% drop in the goods-producing industries. ... Contribution to total growth: Retail best, financial sector next, wholesale and public sector (education, health and public administration) positive... Manufacturing and construction losing ground in this period.

Employer-Employee Relations Within SMEs
http://www.cfib.ca/research/reports/offerings.asp
Of the approximately one million businesses in Canada, 78 % have fewer than five employees and almost 98 % have fewer than 50 employees. This does not include another 1.5 million Canadians who are considered to be self-employed, often working on their own… Small business employers are hard workers. Those surveyed work an average of 55 hours a week which is 45 % longer than full-time Canadian employees who, in 1998, worked an average of 38 hours a week.

Are Knowledge Workers Found Only in High-technology Industries?
http://www.statcan.ca/english/research/11-622-MIE/11-622-MIE2004005.pdf
Firms in service industries are often characterized as less intensive users of traditional innovation inputs, such as R&D… In service industries, firm-level differences in innovation and growth are strongly associated with underlying differences in human resource strategies…  More successful service firms are those that develop skilled workers. In this light, it is not surprising that many of the largest concentrations of knowledge workers are found in service environments.  

Skilled in Training: Results of CFIB Surveys on Training
http://www.cfib.ca/research/reports/training_2003_e.pdf
A small business spends on average 113 hours per year informally training a new employee… The government should recognize that SMEs provide extensive training and should accept informal on-the-job training as an efficient and widespread type of training. Any strategy put in place to help businesses cope with labour shortages and with hiring difficulties should include a training component. These strategies should be flexible and be geared to respond to the needs of all businesses, large and small. 2003

Productivity and Building Human Capital for the “Bottom Third”
http://www.csls.ca/events/Andrew_Jackson.pdf
Despite all of the rhetoric on the need for lifelong learning in a knowledge-based economy, real opportunities to learn are very limited for the vast majority of workers in low paid/low skilled jobs. Lack of access to training means that the working poor are trapped in low productivity jobs, many of which are to be found in private consumer services. At the same time, low productivity jobs are a significant drag on the overall level of labour productivity and on productivity growth in the business sector… While no single policy lever is the answer to raising productivity and job quality in low paid/low skill work, paid training leaves under EI have the potential to help build more effective workplace and sector level training institutions of the kind which have worked well elsewhere... This proposal has the potential to move the rhetoric of lifelong learning for all much closer to reality.

Human Capital, Productivity and Growth
http://economics.uwo.ca/centres/cibc/wp2005/Bowlus_Liu_Robinson02.pdf
Much of the difference in standard of living that opened up between Canada and the United States, particularly in the 1990's is found to be due to the different paths that the price of human capital took in the two countries. In particular, while the price of human capital fell in both countries throughout the 1980's and early 1990's, the price in the United States subsequently began a substantial recovery, in contrast to the continued decline in Canada. Since the wage a worker receives is the product of the (rental) price of human capital and the amount of human capital he or she has for rent, the change in the wage can be decomposed into price and quantity changes. The average Canadian worker fell behind the average United States worker mainly due to the fall in the relative price received for the human capital rented, rather than from any deficiency in the quantity of human capital.

Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts: The Effect of Barriers to Competition on Canadian Productivity
http://www.conferenceboard.ca/documents.asp?rnext=1653
An in-depth inventory of both tariff and non-tariff barriers indicates that while international tariff barriers have been substantially reduced over the past 15 years, tariff rates remain high in a number of sectors… In addition, a unique empirical analysis of the relationship between barriers to competition and Canada–U.S. relative productivity performance indicates that productivity could be enhanced by eliminating barriers to competition in a core group of primary and manufacturing industries. However, for the service sector, differences in regulatory frameworks were not related to relative productivity performance, suggesting that policy-makers must look elsewhere than to barriers to competition for a complete explanation of the Canada–U.S. productivity gap. Document Highlights, Conference Board of Canada 2006.

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