The place looked almost as if it were closed. When I entered the reception area of a local auto-repair shop, I didn’t spot any service personnel right away. But when I called out, a receptionist quickly responded and I had my car problem attended to right away. Then, by coincidence, the shop owner mentioned out loud:
“It’d sure help if I found some new hires,” he said.
“Short of tradespeople?” I asked. And when he nodded, I added, “You know you could probably put an ad in this week’s edition of the Cosmos.”
I called the classified editor at the Cosmos and handed my phone to the shop owner. Within a few minutes, he’d dictated a classified advertisement looking for skilled people in auto-repair; he was offering immediate employment for certain trades.
It felt good that I was maybe helping a local business get in touch with prospective workers to fill his employee gap. At the same time I thought, “Wouldn’t it also be great if someone who was looking for work locally found it right here in town?”
I was dreaming in Technicolor. The workplace, I’ve discovered, faces a multi-faceted dilemma – there are too many positions going unfilled in Canadian manufacturing, production and service companies; there are too few skilled people around to move into those jobs; there doesn’t seem to be the appetite for employers to spend more than minimum wage to get those workers. But on the other hand, many of those skilled workers legitimately seeking jobs appear prepared to wait for the best offer in a kind of bidding war.
The result, I gather, is frustration all round. A two-year-old study by a Canadian staffing agency found that of 510 hiring decision-makers, one in four employers has hired someone they normally wouldn’t have due to the shortage of skilled people. The survey went on to suggest that when some employers find prospective workers already employed, they try to entice them away with outrageous pay bumps.
“There’s just no loyalty anymore,” explained one construction operator in the Maritimes. Statistics Canada also points out that between October and December 2021, there were over 900,000 unfilled positions, up 63 per cent from 2020. Stats Can said the occupations showing the least number of applicants were restaurant servers, construction tradespeople and social workers.
The subject came up over the Victoria Day weekend as several of us, who are either retired or semi-retired, gathered at the newly reopened Second Wedge (where incidentally there seemed to be plenty of customers and plenty of servers). We discussed why there seems to be such high demand and so little supply.
It didn’t take us more than a round of refreshment to realize that we are the problem. One had retired from charity fundraising, another from a printing plant, and I from teaching. Like most First World nations, the baby-boom generation is the problem. As we flooded into the world – about 73 million boomers born between 1946 and 1964 – the world responded by building more schools (streaming us into both professional jobs and the trades), offering our parents bonus payments (to cover cost-of-living increases) and expanding health care and housing. And the workplace expanded to accommodate us at every turn.
Today, however, the pandemic has set everybody back in terms of workplace advancement. And restrictions to immigration have choked off the supply of prospective workers in every sector. The result? High demand and little supply of people to work anywhere and everywhere. This shows up as a crisis in post-secondary education. A study at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson) shows there are more skills vacancies than there are job vacancies.
“The pace of skill demand from employers and the skills they need is changing faster than our training and skill production systems can keep up,” said Tricia Williams at TMU’s Future Skills Centre told the CBC. And it’s costing the Canadian economy something like $25 billion in productivity loss.
There are plenty of other factors influencing the flow of skilled workers into and out of the economy. Working from home still feels more attractive than commuting to downtown. With more women seeking work (either at home or downtown) many cannot find enough childcare spots. And with inflation driving up the cost of living, not allowing minimum wages to rise accordingly hamstrings too many families.
I’ve been thinking about that classified ad for that auto-repair job in town. In many ways it’s the canary in the coal mine. Train more people, pay them better wages, make working away from home more attractive … or expect more delays and greater disruption of everyday services.