Labour shortage does not benefit everybody

Great stats in here from a recent, 2006 based, study by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

Read the whole article, but here are some of the great bits of information found in this article:

"A 2006 study conducted by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business revealed that more than half of Canadian owners of small and medium-sized businesses had great concerns about the labour shortage. The survey polled nearly 12,000 businesses from coast to coast.

Nearly two-thirds of firms expected labour shortages over the next five years. Firms with the most dismal expectations were larger firms, and firms who have had to hire employees during the last five years.

These are the firms with the most hiring experience and the greatest human resource needs."

They do a great job of framing the problem specifically:

"Nationally, the difficulties in hiring workers were linked to either skills shortages, meaning a limited supply of particular skill sets related to certain occupations, or overall labour shortages."


Then they give stats on the overall issues of both Labour and Skills shortages and what is actually happening, not what people think is happening. Bottom line, the vast majority of companies are experiencing only SKILL SHORTAGES, it is nearly half (40%)! :

"Nationally, more than one-third of Canada’s small and medium-sized businesses experienced shortages of both skills and labour. One-fifth of respondents were impacted by a labour shortage only, while more than 40 per cent of respondents had been only impacted by the skills shortage."


And finally, not to say I told you so, but I told you so! I have had discussions with everyone from close family to work collegues about the fact that we push the majority of our youth in to post secondary education. Yet I see the the majority of new job growth/demand in areas that don't require it extensive post secondary education! Anyways, here is some mind boggling stats that show post secondary jobs aren't in nearly the demand as technical, apprenticeship and trades related jobs! Check it out:

"The hardest hit areas for finding employees included jobs that require college or apprenticeship education (42 per cent), or occupations requiring secondary school education or job-specific training (32 per cent).

It was relatively easy to find people for jobs requiring a university degree or managerial occupations. Within the occupations hardest hit by the labour shortage were trades and skilled transport and equipment operators (66 per cent)."

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