Labor Pangs to Worsen - BC struggling to meet labour shortage and blame youth attitudes as major factor.

WOW, this article is an amazing article as well as a terrible one, all in the same chunk of writing.

It is full of great stats like:

"The 600,000 seniors now in B.C. will double to 1.2 million aged 65-plus in 20 years, speakers told a GVRD-led forum on labour and immigration issues in Surrey. Barely 100,000 people are projected to enter the labour force to offset the loss."

as well as ...

"Intensifying the challenge is the construction boom luring workers from other sectors.

The value of major construction projects underway has climbed from $65 billion two years ago to $110 billion now, said Keith Sashaw, president of Vancouver Regional Construction Association."

Great, tangible stats that people can use to dicuss and show examples of the Canada wide Labour Shortage.

They again back up what many other sources have been saying, post secondary education is looked at by most of the population as the "give all take all" in finding employment and it has really crippled some sectors.

Clearly, the construction sector is booming and yet culturally, we tend to look at those kinds of jobs as "dirty", "mindless" or "low paying". This is simply not the case and hasn't been for years.

Now the article also make blanket statements about youthful generations that are very stereotypical yet commonly held by alot of people, like the following:

" 'We have a cultural problem,” forum participant Susan Jones said, adding many Canadians have been guilty of being “snobs” who believe their children must go to university and nothing less will do.

Jones said she could name 20 young people “basically sitting around with their fingers up their nose because they sneer at a lot of jobs.' "

Apparently someones own personal experience or view point dictates actual trends about a group of people. We don't allow this in regards to race, sex, religion or even sexual orientation anymore yet I hear alot of these sentiments from people in my line of work.

I can tell you from experience alot of my "20 something" are great workers. The majority have been in long term jobs, show up for work on time and even work in jobs that are so called "dirty", "mindless" or "low paying", yet they live at the same or above my standard of living.

Just wish this mentality would be put to bed, it only frustrates the youthful populations even more then they already are. Plus, in all honesty it is a prejudiced stance to hold.

Anyways, check out the article by clicking on the heading.