Looking at the Future

Employers in Canada are facing a future where organizational success could be compromised by their inability to hire and retain the people needed to do the work. 

Statistics Canada indicates there will be severe shortages of workers in certain industries by 2011 – just seven years from now. It is easy to think that those shortages are still a ways off, or that the warnings are worst-case situations. Headlines prescient of what we can expect over the next few years are becoming more common and it is therein the danger lies as we tend to ignore prevalent noise.

Nursing Workforce Faces HR Challenges 
Canadian nurses average 43.7 years of age and there is a two to 1 relationship for nurses over 40 to those under 39. (Workplace Today, August 2002)

Canada Forecasts Job Shortages Within a Decade
In 2001, almost 25% of medical specialists were 55 and over, while the average age of general practitioners was only slightly younger at 45.2 years. 

Professors at universities and colleges are also among the oldest groups of workers – amost 29% of professors were age 55 and over in 2001. (Canada.com. Canada Census) 

Skilled Labour Shortages
The upstream oil and gas sector currently provides direct employment to about 96,400 people and indirect employment to over 130,000 people, but is experiencing shortages in skilled labour. (Canada News Wire, Edmonton, August 21, 2001)


Canadian Construction and Machining Industries Need Skilled Trades People
By Michelle Clark, M.A., for Canada US Employment

There is a shortage of skilled trades workers across Canada in industries such as construction and machining. So far this year, Canada US Employment has placed foreign bricklayers, CNC machinists and auto mechanics, who will work in Canada on a temporary work permit basis until they obtain their immigration visa. We expect to place many more of these, as well as carpenters, cabinetmakers, welders and tool and die makers. Due to the large numbers of older workers who will reach retirement age, and the lack of young people entering these professions, there will continue to be a critical shortage of these workers for the next 10 years. (March 2003)

Food-service Shortages
Desperate employment times take desperate measures. Cloutier & Briggs, the Rockport, Maine, firm that owns and operates the eight Denny's franchises in that state, is having such a hard time finding staff to run its restaurants, it has crossed the Canadian border and launched an effort to draw more workers Down East.
As a result of the dire shortage of available employees in the United States, the franchiser sent a two-man recruitment team to the Canadian province of New Brunswick. They set up shop at hotels in Fredericton and St. John to interview applicants. Experience was not required, the recruiters told potential applicants, just a good attitude and willingness to work. (Restaurants/Institutions, May 2000)

By the end of this decade 15% of the workforce will be within 10 years of retirement. That means by 2011:

• 2.34 million members of Canada’s 15.6 million person workforce will be making plans to leave. 
• 20% of baby boomers will be at least 61 years of age, which would be a boom for younger workers if they were able, in the early stages of their careers, to replace the intellectual capital and historical knowledge those boomers will be taking with them as they leave.

Half of Managers Work After Retirement
A good number of retired workers are working after retirement – with more than half of early retired managers and about 20% of other retirees working in other full or part time work, in a study of Bell Employees conducted by U of Toronto & San Diego State University. (HR Reporter, September 22, 2003)

Statistics Canada indicates that the reserve pool of women which accounted for 2/3 of the new entrants to the workforce during the 1990’s is peaking. The number of workers between 20 and 34 as a percentage of the total workforce has declined by 14% over the last decade and that immigration represents nearly 70% of the growth in the workforce over the last decade. The potential exists for immigration to account for all labour force growth by 2011

Toronto Drafts Plan to Avert Labour Shortages
The federal government is looking for ways to share the wealth of knowledge and skills held by new immigrants locating in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver with the rest of the country through policies that encourage new immigrants to settle elsewhere. Toronto is actively fighting the federal action in an effort to protect Toronto employers from existing and growing labour shortage concerns. (HR Reporter, August 11, 2003)

Foreign Help
Every year over 90,000 foreign workers enter Canada working temporarily to help Canadian employers address skill shortages in Canada. (Citizenship & Immigration Canada)

Employers need to begin now addressing the workplace issues they will be facing over the next few years. Culture change is a slow arduous process and it will take tremendous change to create workplaces hospitable to the new workforce. 

The shortage of workers alone will have a significant impact because of the effect those shortages will have on compensation costs. 

When all the other changes to the workforce increase

• aging workers, 
• workers with different work ethics and expectations, 
• increased training and development needs,
• more flexible and more costly benefits,
• more flexibility in days off, 
• language, cultural and religious differences, 

those companies that have not already built the necessary corresponding changes into their workplace environments will find themselves struggling more than most to hire and retain people.

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