Trades worker shortage worsens through pandemic
February 16, 2022
Many B.C. construction industry businesses held out hope that COVID-19-related job losses in other sectors of the economy might help to relieve some of their labour shortage issues.
But a flood of new workers into the building sector never materialized, and the industry continues to struggle with labour supply issues.
“In 2020 with COVID we had our first material decline in construction employment,” said Brynn Bourke, executive director at BC Building Trades.
In 2019, the year before the pandemic, construction employment was expected to increase by 17,000 over the following 10 years; in 2021 that projected employment growth nearly quadrupled to 64,900, according to data from BuildForce Canada.
Chris Atchison, president of the BC Construction Association, said that while some people may have lost their jobs during the pandemic and accepted alternative employment in the construction industry, their numbers were not large enough to show up in the data.
Atchison added that even if closures in other sectors did spur an increase in construction industry employment, it would have been temporary, because any flow of employees from other industries would likely have reversed once those businesses reopened.
There has been tremendous pressure on the industry to maintain the status quo on work that was underway at the beginning of the pandemic, Atchison said.
At the same time, the industry increased its new project intake, which worsened the labour supply shortage. Major public and private investments were made over the past few years in infrastructure projects ranging from LNG Canada to the Broadway subway, and additional provincial and federal infrastructure projects were initiated during the pandemic. That, combined with the need to repair critical infrastructure damaged by natural disasters, is putting even more pressure on an already strained employment landscape.
An out-dated training system is at least partly to blame for the trade shortage, according to Bourke. Traditionally, high school students who decide to enter a trade choose their courses in grades 11 and 12 based on that decision. Today, the average apprentice is 28 years old and, contrary to the old high school model, many have chosen to switch careers and join a trade in their late 20s.
Source: Vancouver is Awesome
