Recent studies forecast a looming shortage of qualified workers owing to declining birth rates and the approaching retirement of the Baby-Boom generation (starting this year for people retiring at the traditional age of 65.) This talent shortage is expected to deepen over the next 20 years, resulting in hundreds of thousands of unfilled positions.
For example, a 2009 report by Dr. Rick Miner, former president of Ontario’s Seneca College, shows a huge pending gap between employers’ needs for talent and the skill set of those seeking employment. In Ontario Dr. Miner predicts a labour shortage of 200,000—or 1.8 million people--by 2031 and also that 77 percent of the province’s labour force will require post-secondary credentials by then (compared to 60 percent currently.) In short, Ontario will need both a larger and more skilled workforce than will be available.
A backgrounder to a provincial all-candidates debate organized by the Toronto Financial Services Alliance (TFSA) at Toronto City Hall on August 31st, 2011 reports: “Dr. Miner concludes that, with current trends, 450,000 individuals will not have the skills needed to fill vacant positions by 2016. The figure is expected to increase to 700,000 individuals in following years, while vacancies requiring post-secondary skills will increase to over one million by 2021 and two million by 2031.”
The backgrounder continues: “Over a 22-year period Ontario will need to train, re-train or recruit 1.73 million people. This translates into an increase of 78,636 post-secondary graduates per year, an increase of four times the number of people admitted into the Second Career re-training program. Another way of looking at this figure is that it would represent a 56% increase in the annual number of graduates from Ontario’s post-secondary institutions (currently approximately 140,000, including college diplomas, bachelor, master and doctoral degrees.)”
Additionally, studies by the Conference Board of Canada and others show that, at Ontario’s current birth rate, we will only replace those workers who leave the workforce, and that all net growth in the workforce will have to come from immigration.
So before you vote in the upcoming provincial elections (Manitoba – Oct 4th, Newfoundland & Labrador – Oct 11th, Northwest Territories – Oct 3rd, Ontario – Oct 6th, Prince Edward Island – Oct 3rd, Sasketchewan – Nov 7th, Yukon – Oct 11th) it’s important to ask your local candidates what they propose to do to make training programs more accessible, especially for positions that will be in significant demand in the years to come.
You also need to know things like what candidates plan to do, or plan to encourage the federal government to do, to attracted skilled immigrants, expedite processes for granting visas and credentials, and allow foreign students to find work here upon completion of their studies.
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