SASKATOON (Staff) – Leighton Blashko is mapping out life after graduation but as a member of the Class of ’94, his prospects don’t look bright.
With limited job opportunities and sagging crop prices, the roads he would like to choose often have dead ends.
The 22-year-old agriculture student at the University of Alberta would like to return to his family grain and cattle farm in Andrew, Alta., but says it just isn’t possible.
“It’s what I’d like to do, but it just wouldn’t pay. The cattle is subsidizing the grain right now, but who knows …”
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His second choice, finding a full-time agriculture-related job, isn’t looking good either.
“There are not too many jobs out there. The whole market is kind of depressed.”
Chemical companies, traditionally a steady employer of agriculture students, are hiring for temporary positions, if at all. Blashko said he’d be happy with a contract position simply for the experience that might lead to other jobs.
This is the reality for the Class of ’94. Many want to return to the farm but even if that is possible, they’ll probably have to combine that with off-farm work to survive.
According to Statistics Canada, 46 percent of farmers under age 35 take jobs off the farm some time throughout the year. And 24 percent spend at least six months each year with alternate employment.
Finding that second job is where the value of their education may prove itself. In a tight job market, a diploma or degree may be a valuable asset.
Dale Wotherspoon thinks so. The University of Saskatchewan student wants to go back to the farm but figures his degree will give him the choices to keep the farm going: “A degree gives you the option to have another out.”
Like many of his classmates, he was encouraged by his parents to get an education in case the economy doesn’t improve.
“My parents would like it if I went back to the farm, but the only way is if I have some other source of income,” he said.
Wotherspoon will be competing with graduates who decide to try their luck in the off-farm job market, with no immediate intention of returning to the land.
Brent Wellman, an employment counsellor at the University of Saskatchewan, said contract jobs are the likely future for many graduates.
“I think the times of working for one organization for 40 years are gone, and if you don’t keep developing new skills, you won’t be kept around.”
Wellman said companies are shuffling workers right now, and prospects for full-time jobs are not promising. He’s been arranging campus recruitment for the past four years and said the number of recruiters for agriculture graduates is down.
Little security
However, he said the total number of jobs may be higher than last year because of the increase in contract positions.
Shannon Suchs, who will graduate with an agriculture diploma from the University of Manitoba this spring, said she has no intention of returning to her family farm in Langruth.
Unlike Blashko, she’s optimistic that she will find something.
“I think things look pretty good this year,” she said. “In agriculture there always seems to be jobs with the chemical companies or the banks … it’s just if you can nail one down.”
Her ideal job would be working in developing countries, but like Blashko, she’d take any position that helped her learn more about the agriculture industry.
University of Saskatchewan student Carrie DeRoo shares Suchs’ optimism. Her idea of a perfect job would be working in public relations for an animal health company or as a 4-H provincial specialist, but she said recent graduates can’t be too choosy.
“I think a lot of people are too fussy. And you have to be optimistic. I don’t think you’re going to get a job if you’re pessimistic.”
Like a lot of her classmates, DeRoo has worked at an agriculture-related summer job for the past three years. She said her experience as an Agriculture Canada plot researcher should help her find something in her field.
Lyle Elmgren, assistant dean for U of S agriculture students, said at one time summer jobs often led to permanent jobs, but that has changed. Government cuts and a poor economy have changed placement trends, he said.
“At one time the government would hire 40 to 50 percent of the grads. Now we’re heavily reliant on non-government agribusinesses for placement of the grads.”
Elmgren still firmly believes in the importance of education.
“Even if agriculture specialities decline, their training will keep them in the ball game for other areas. The chances of getting a job are better if you have an education than if you don’t.”
