The CAHRC labour market report is based on a survey of 1,034 people in primary agriculture, including 813 Canadian producers. The survey found:
It isn’t a pretty picture, and it’s about to get uglier.
In mid-March, the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council released the results of a labour market information survey on primary agriculture.
The report, based on data from 2014, said that the gap between labour demand and the supply of domestic employees was 59,000. By 2025, the agriculture labour shortage could nearly double, growing to 114,000.
The shortage represented 14.7 percent of all jobs within Canadian agriculture in 2014. In 2015, the labour gap is expected to rise to 27 percent.
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The numbers, which are higher than any other industry in Canada, were presented at an agricultural labour conference in Winnipeg.
The 59,000 figure represents the gap between the number of people who farm businesses want to hire versus the number of Canadians willing to work in agriculture.
Temporary foreign workers fill a large chunk of the void. In 2014, temporary foreign workers held 45,000 jobs in primary agriculture, mostly in the horticultural sector.
More than 1,000 farmers and other people participated in the survey, which looked at primary agriculture but not the food processing industry.
Respondents said three factors are responsible for most of the labour shortfall:
- the seasonal nature of farm work
- the difficulty persuading Canadians to move to rural areas
- the wage gap between farm work and the average wage in Canada; the weekly wages in primary agriculture are 72 percent of the average wage for all economic sectors in Canada
Ron Davidson, the Canadian Meat Council’s director of government and media relations, said a reluctance to move to rural areas, where meat plants are mostly located, is a massive recruitment obstacle. There are pages of online postings for jobs at meat plants but few people from Nova Scotia are willing to move to rural Manitoba.
The meat industry and other parts of the agri-food sector depend on foreign workers, but the Conservative government imposed restrictions on the program in 2014, cutting the length of time a foreign worker can stay in Canada. As well, the government capped the number of foreign workers at businesses with more than 10 people. The cap was 30 percent, then 20 percent and will be limited to 10 percent effective July 1.
Changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program applied to most segments of the agri-food sector, but not primary agriculture.
The Liberal government is reviewing the program and will introduce proposed changes in the fall.
robert.arnason@producer.com
- Demand for agricultural employees is expected to increase by 21,200 between 2014 and 2015.
- Domestic supply of agricultural workers is expected to shrink by 33,400 between 2014 and 2015, mostly because of retirements.
- Temporary foreign workers represented 12 percent of the primary agriculture workforce in 2014.
- The average wage in primary agriculture last year was 71 percent of the average wage in all other sectors of the economy. Seasonal agriculture workers, who work primarily in horticulture, likely skew that figure lower.
- Unfilled vacancies cost the primary agriculture industry $1.5 billion in lost sales in 2014.
- Seventeen percent of survey respondents said they had delayed or cancelled expansion plans because they couldn’t find farm workers.
- The agriculture labour shortage is expected to be 114,000 by 2025. General farm workers and farm managers will account for 77 percent of the shortfall.
