A ‘Supercommuting’ Atlantic Canadian Workforce Can’t Solve Labour Shortages
David Campbell is a Moncton-based economic development consultant and co-host of the Huddle podcast, Insights. The following piece was originally published on his blog, It’s the Economy, Stupid!, on Substack.
Sometimes I feel the need to explain Yogi Berra to young people, but today I will resist the temptation.
The Globe And Mail ran a commentary over the weekend called Embracing The Supercommute Can Help Solve Canada’s Labour Shortage. It was written by the head of a firm that offers this service to companies facing labour shortages.
In the piece, Todd Clyde makes the case that parts of Canada (which seems like a euphemism for Atlantic Canada) have high unemployment, particularly among tradespeople. He says other parts of Canada need those workers, so why not bring them together through supercommuting? The workers get to stay in their beloved hometown of Bay Roberts or Yarmouth and the employer gets the workers as they need them; it’s a win-win.
There was, in fact, another Globe And Mail article a decade ago titled The Rise Of The Super-commuter. The problem is that 2022 is not 2012.
There certainly may be pockets of high trade-related unemployment somewhere in Canada, but there is mounting evidence that trades and construction workers are becoming scarce all across the country, in communities small and large. I fear this is just another central Canadian seeing a 13 percent unemployment rate in Cape Breton and starting to salivate.
Here’s why the supercommuting workforce is not the solution it once was.
First, in most areas with high unemployment there is also a growing shortage of trades and even more general construction workers. If you look at job vacancy data this trend is clear, again even in regions with high unemployment.
I recently interviewed employers and workforce types across Atlantic Canada and the response was uniform: it is getting very hard to secure this workforce and it has become a barrier to building housing across the region.
Second, related to the first point, in the areas with high unemployment there is also a high or even very high seasonality in the workforce. In Cape Breton, one in three workers collected EI during the year. Some of that is due to “normal” unemployment but my research suggests that a large share is due to seasonality in the workforce.
A person who has a job, for example, working in construction for eight months and then collecting EI is not really a candidate to move to southern Ontario to work unless the pay is overwhelmingly good.
And, speaking of EI, construction is still the sector that has by far the most EI usage across Canada. I’m not suggesting that the nearly 300,000 construction workers who collected EI in 2020 were all skilled trades workers but it is clear that, no matter the demand, a lot of construction workers are used to taking a few months off each year. A job supercommuting is not going to address this issue.
Third, tradespeople are a lot older, on average, than they were in the past. That matters because a supercommuting job entails three weeks on and one week off, or some other configuration. As these workers get older, they are less likely to want to supercommute.
Fourth, supercommuting doesn’t solve the problem, it just creates more problems, like a much higher cost of trades-related activity. It’s one thing when it is the oil sands, where $150,000 salaries do not impact the business model, but for other industries this just leads to even more upward pressure on costs.
Again, I’m not criticizing this specific company’s business model. But I am seriously criticizing the implication that there are tens of thousands of skilled tradespeople in Atlantic Canada just dying to work in Ontario or Alberta if someone would just please hire them.
Solving the construction workforce shortage will not be easy, but here are a few thoughts:
We should use the supercommuting workforce but think further afield. Many countries that use foreign labour to meet construction demand. In Canada, not so much.
We also need to put a serious push on turning out tradespeople. Construction is always an industry with peaks and valleys, but the construction workforce should be geared more towards the peak than the valley. If we have a construction workforce that can only address the demand during a trough, we will not only impede economic growth but will push up housing prices and create a lot of other negative impacts.
We should encourage more entrepreneurship in the construction and trades workforces. A plumber or electrician that works for a company is different than one who works for themselves. I would suggest that more entrepreneurs would help, although it’s not a panacea.
Finally, governments shouldn’t cannibalize the construction workforce. This is my least favourite solution but I would rather the government put on hold its large building projects or even–look away–transportation infrastructure projects if it would help boost the number of homes constructed.
I talked to one contractor who a few years ago got completely out of the home-building business and went into road building because he said the margins were better.
Of course, the problem with housing construction in Canada is not just related to the construction workforce. NIMBYism, supply chain shortages, government policies and planning, and other issues are also part of the problem. But the solution to the shortage in trades and construction workers is not to entice them to move or supercommute.
The solution is to solve the underlying problems.
Huddle publishes commentaries from groups and individuals on important business issues facing the Maritimes. These commentaries do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Huddle. To submit a commentary for consideration, contact editor Mark Leger: [email protected].