Gillian Shaw
Sun
“It is now apparent to us that the availability of skilled workers will have the biggest impact on our ability to keep the economy rolling at its current level in British Columbia.”
— Manley McLachlan, president of the British Columbia
Construction Association, on his prediction for the coming year.
British Columbia‘s economy is becoming a victim of its own job-creation success.
Whether it’s the help-wanted signs in the window or the surly pizza clerk who keeps his job despite letting loose with a string of obscenities against a customer, the evidence that British Columbia is turning out more jobs than people to fill them is unmistakable.
In the past 12 months, employment in this province has grown by a whopping 90,000-plus jobs, the highest growth rate of any province in Canada, and the trend shows no sign of abating. Unemployment is at record lows and in parts of the province, like oil-and-gas-driven northeastern B.C., it is too low to statistically count.
“All the predictions we were considering a year ago have come through,” said Manley McLachlan, president of the British Columbia Construction Association. “And the impact of that growth has been more significant than we envisioned.
“Certainly the challenges around skills shortages are front and centre. It has come to the point that the availability of skilled workers is having a real impact on contractors’ ability to take on certain projects.
“Overall, the industry is running full out.”
Finding people to fill the jobs has become the new issue for the economy here.
“It is now apparent to us that the availability of skilled workers will have the biggest impact on our ability to keep the economy rolling at its current level in British Columbia,” said McLachlan.
Aron Gampel, Scotiabank’s deputy chief economist, would agree. The issue is becoming how to keep up with an economy that is going at full steam.
“I think the real constraints in B.C. are capacity-related,” he said. “You can’t get enough workers, you can’t enough material, it’s a logistics nightmare.”
Manufacturing, construction, management, finance and jobs in the hospitality sector combined to make up the lion’s share of the job gains, with 80,000 of the new jobs from November of last year to November of this year being full-time.
If employers had to replace only retiring baby boomers, the demand would be high enough, but added to that is the increase in jobs that comes with the sizzling hot economy.
“It certainly has been a milestone year, with the tourism industry recovering and now starting to take off,” said Arlene Keis, chief executive officer of Go2, B.C.’s tourism industry’s human resources association. “This has been a year of change.
“Everything that we have been predicting for 10 years is happening. The economy is getting better and everywhere people have jobs and the competition is so fierce for people it is impacting businesses in ways it never has before.”
The high demand for workers is pushing up wages, a plus, as McLachlan points out, for construction-industry workers who have failed to see wage gains for a number of years.
“There is fierce competition right now for people,” he said. “There is a growing vacuum in middle managers — estimators, project managers, superintendents — that is at crisis proportions.
“Contractors are not only looking across the country, but also overseas.”
McLachlan said contractors are hiring through job fairs in Europe and the industry is working with the government in recruiting immigrants to the fill jobs. It is also working on a program to help landed immigrants who may want to enter the field work.
Aboriginal communities are working with the industry in training and recruiting for construction work and McLachlan said the industry is also trying to attract women.
“While there are challenges in place, the industry right now is very positive,” he said.
In the tourism sector, the good news/bad news punch of job growth has left some hotel managers changing sheets and adopting other measures to cope with the talent crunch.
“Businesses are having to close early, managers are making beds in hotels, chains are having to lower their hiring standards because they can’t find enough to fill the jobs or they are tolerating behaviours they wouldn’t have in the past because they can’t replace the workers,” said Keis.
Retention has become the buzzword as employers struggle to find the magic formula that will attract and keep employees.
“You see it in all sectors,” said Keis. “Industries are realizing they have to look at retention.
“Employers never had to pay attention to that before because it was an employers’ market, now it is an employees’ market and people are saying, ‘What can I do to be a better employer?’ “
It’s a problem that is cutting across all sectors. Don Cormack, general manager at Manpower in the Lower Mainland and a member of the Vancouver Board of Trade’s skills shortages committee, said his company is placing people in all positions, from labourers through computer operators.
“It is the whole gamut, it goes right across the board,” he said. “What we’re seeing is it is becoming more of a candidate- driven market where the bargaining is being driven more by the candidate than by the employer, so you are going to see wages going up.”
While the resource sectors and such areas as construction have traditionally been boom and bust in this province, there is no sign of slowing yet.
“In the Greater Vancouver area and British Columbia this has been trending now for nearly a year,” said Cormack.
“When you look at the stats, you can read them any way you want — the jobs are going up, the trend is continuing.”
© The Vancouver Sun 2005