RED DEER – A workforce analyst predicts Canada’s labour shortage will grow worse as the country’s population ages.
“This is something we are going to have to work with for the rest of our lifetimes,” David Baxter told an Alberta beef industry conference in Red Deer Feb. 23.
He presented Statistics Canada figures that link labour shortages to changing demographics in which families are growing smaller and Canadians are growing older.
Canadian birth rates have dropped since 1971, and a large number of workers are close to retirement.
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Statistics Canada has found that 9.8 million people are 40 to 59 years old, 9.1 million are 24 to 39 and 7.8 million are younger than 19.
Mandatory retirement age is 65 but many leave between 55 and 59, especially within the public sector. Every five years the 60 to 65 age group grows larger.
Baxter said no flood of young people is coming to replace the baby boom generation and fill jobs.
There are 420,000 fewer Canadians younger than 10 than 10 years ago. Schools are closing in every province but Alberta.
Even if the birth rates climbed, those people would not be ready to work for 20 years, Baxter said. The typical Alberta woman has 1.5 children so she is replacing herself and half a man.
Canada is below replacement level birth rates.
In 1959, one out of four women younger than 24 had a baby. That has dropped to one out of 10.
Some argue there are only pockets of shortages.
Alberta’s unemployment rate is 3.3 percent. The province’s economic boom started in 1997 just as the labour force began to decline. About 25,000 workers came into Alberta from other provinces last year.
“The flow from Saskatchewan is slowing down. You have just about everybody from Saskatchewan that you are going to get,” Baxter said.
However, people continue to migrate from Ontario, where 12,000 left the province in the third quarter of 2006. There have also been record levels of migration from Newfoundland, with many going to Alberta.
Newfoundland had 37,000 unemployed people last year while Alberta generated 86,000 new jobs. Unfortunately for Newfoundland, it’s likely not the unemployed who are leaving. Instead, the employed and skilled are pulling up stakes and moving West.
The Alberta labour force is working at full steam. Baxter’s research showed 95 percent of the adult male population in that province was in the workforce in 2006. Among women, 84 percent are working and most are middle aged.
About 700,000 people aren’t working in Alberta. Most are either older than 65 and do not want to work or younger than 24 and may be in school. Another 20,400 wanted to work but couldn’t because of illness, family responsibilities or because they are in school. About 5,500 can’t work for other reasons.
In Canada 385,000 wanted to work but couldn’t for the same reasons.
