By Tony Patterson for National Capital SCAN Canada’s ICT sector generates more than $150 billion a year in revenues and employs about 600,000 people. Services are the largest component. Manufacturing shipments are just $20 billion, of which two-thirds are exported, mostly to the U.S. Large manufacturers are increasingly outsourcing their operations to low-wage countries in eastern Europe and Asia. Industry structure is fragmented, with 98% of the 32,000 companies in the sector employing fewer than 100 people. About half the scientist and engineers in Canadian industry, more than 30,000 professionals, work in ICT.
Is this all going ass over teakettle because we can’t find people to keep the digits streaming, storage expanding, chips soldered and advisors advising?
Not bloody likely. When you look at it objectively, it’s not even much of a problem. More like an annoyance to be contended with.
The fact is that almost every economic sector in Canada is forecasting a shortage of skilled workers in the next decade. The total full-time workforce is just over 13 million (2005). The Conference Board of Canada is quoted endlessly about a million workers needed and not available by 2020. That report is years old so the number may have fluctuated, but it’s large.
With the exception of some glamorous cultural occupations, where there are no shortages of aspiring artists and performers, every business in Canada is caught in the worker squeeze. This has prompted the feds to put up some $50 million to address the problem. The cash comes via the sector council program of Human Resources and Social Development Canada. Some 30 sector councils, of which ICTC is one, get about $500,000 a year for infrastructure as long as they are able to demonstrate an active buy-in from the players in their bailiwicks. More money flows for sectors that come up with creative and effective projects to improve their HR situation.
And there are many such projects, testifying to the endless ingenuity of businesses threatened with loss of revenue. The tourism sector, for instance, has looked to people on social assistance to fill positions at the lower end of the wage scale. Trucking has instituted a special 12-week training program for first-year drivers. Those who complete it win a sharp reduction in insurance rates, which transfers into a saving for trucking companies, as well as improved safety records. The companies are therefore more willing to take on beginners.
The auto repair sector has initiated a remote video training program whereby mechanics can upgrade their skills on-site with no downtime. Courses explaining the latest electronic and mechanical systems are delivered by satellite to TV monitors in the workplace. They can be followed in the lunch hour.
The facts are that everywhere one looks, industries are seized of the shortages and looking for ways to cope. For instance, sometimes when young people are in on the ground floor, they can’t see the career opportunities on the floors above. The retail food industry has embarked on a program to entice ‘stackers’, who are often students working their way through school, to become ‘lifers’, such as the bakers and butchers in the stores and supply centres.
Some sectors are looking to specialized recruitment initiatives among First Nations people, or older workers, or women for the skilled trades and professions such as engineering where they are under-represented.
Bernard Courtois says about the IT world, “many jobs are quite movable offshore to where the people are.” Bernard, former executive VP at Bell Canada and now CEO of the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC), doesn’t see this as good for Canada. But it may be inevitable if other approaches fall short. Other approaches include more people working more overtime hours; companies moving to where workers can be found, accepting workers with lower qualifications; au-to-ma-tion.
There’s one condition that afflicts ICT more seriously than other areas of the economy. The crater that got dug through the turn of the millennium was economically deep and psychologically traumatic. While the economics have been well rebuilt, with revenues and employment higher today than ever, the psychology remains an impediment.
Paul Swinwood of the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) has estimated that the ICT sector is short by some 80,000 workers this year, with demand for workers increasing, and the supply of graduates in ICT studies well under the peaks of a decade ago. The niggardly supply is the direct result of the sectoral collapse in 2001, which left thousands unemployed for a while at least. It affected the attitudes of many who are now middle-aged. It affected the opinions of people who are charged with counselling students about career choices. It affected, in short, those people most influential in guiding youth toward the world of employment.
As Bob Gillett, president of Algonquin College, puts it: “There is still little confidence in young people or their parents in technology as a career.”
But ICTC, along with sister organizations such as Ottawa's OCRI and the provincial Ontario Centres of Excellence, is tackling the deficit with a combination of programs to identify the needs and develop the talent. The board of directors of ITAC, one of ICTC’s sponsoring organizations, has visited a high school in Halifax along with the provincial premier, to emphasize opportunities available in the world of technology. ICTC’s national Focus on Information Technology program provides certification for students in grades 11 and 12 who complete an extracurricular course in technical, business and interpersonal skills.
ICTC is also pressing for more effective integration of immigrants into Canada’s tech sector and an increase in the quantity and quality of co-op programs that bring young people into the industrial milieu as part of their studies. IT companies generally attest that students with co-op experience are most hireable, often by the companies that have met them through a co-op placement.
The short of it is that even 80,000 jobs unfilled is, if not a drop in the bucket, less than 14% of the ICT workforce, and far from abnormal for an economic sector that is growing so fast. Average annual growth in the ICT sector has been 8% since 1997, even throughout the dot.com/overwiring collapse, more than twice as fast as the Canadian economy overall (3.5%). A lag in the availability of skilled workers during such a period is hardly surprising.
It’s more than likely such results will soon enough find parents and counsellors encouraging their charges to jump into ICT. And just as they turn the tots into techies, it’s not impossible that the job pendulum will start a downswing and graduates will emerge to a funnel that leaves many scratching their heads and looking for retraining. Nobody ever said matching supply and demand would be easy.
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This intel first appeared on: http://nationalcapitalscan.ca/news
