Province Pledges $490,000 To Develop Workforce As Thousands Of Unfilled IT Jobs Loom
FREDERICTON—A renewed focus on building New Brunswick’s IT sector this week is seeing a boost from the provincial government, which has pledged to help train workers to fulfill a widening job demand.
The Government of New Brunswick announced on May 17 that it will provide $490,000 over two years to TechImpact, to support the development of the province’s IT workforce.
The funding will allow TechImpact to manage province-wide efforts to train, attract, and retain skilled IT professionals, in partnership with The McKenna Institute at the University of New Brunswick.
The province’s Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour, along with post-secondary institutions and private-sector employers, are also behind the effort to train more qualified IT workers.
The need for new training was highlighted in a recent five-year growth plan for New Brunswick’s tech workforce, produced by TechImpact and Jupia Consultants, at the request of the province.
It found critical steps were needed to ensure New Brunswick has the skilled digital workforce that the evolving economy needs. It also found that a wave of skilled IT positions that need to be filled in the coming years.
“IT is big business in New Brunswick, representing 10,000 jobs with salaries of $700-million per year, and it’s getting bigger as digital transformation becomes a necessity for virtually every sector of our economy,” said TechImpact CEO Cathy Simpson.
Simpson said the Workforce Growth Plan found nearly 5,900 IT jobs will need to be filled in the province over the next five years, much of them made up of software developers, cybersecurity professionals, and cloud computing experts.
The plan, which drew on a survey of 52 companies, noted that 1,983 positions will need to be filled in the next 12 months, 1,939 in the next two-to-three years, and 2,036 openings within the next three-to-five years.
The summary plan includes pillars to align stakeholders and address workforce supply and demand, while underscoring the need to fast-track new talent training.
Work already in motion
TechImpact previously announced a series of boot camps aimed at improving IT skills, offered in collaboration with The McKenna Institute and UNB.
Simpson told Huddle ahead of this week’s Digital Innovation Summit in St. Andrews that similar themes had been emerging throughout the pandemic for tech firms, educators, and government–all of which needed to be addressed to have a thriving economy.
RELATED: Barrett Brothers Invest $2.5-Million In UNB Initiative To Grow Digital Economy
“We need these elements, like the adoption and penetration of digital technology and the growth and number of people ready with digital skills,” she said.
As a panelist, Simpson took the opportunity at this week’s summit to talk about digital transformation (using digital technologies to create new–or modify existing–business processes), and digital maturity (for companies to maintain a competitive advantage), in addition to programs TechImpact has been offering throughout the pandemic aimed at helping businesses adopt a tech strategy.
She spent much of the time discussing what the next couple of years look like for partners seeking to scale and prepare for the digital workforce.
This week’s summit is a good start
Simpson said the idea of a Digital Innovation Summit alone is a big win. She said having the sector well represented in one room leads to inevitable collisions of thought, questions, answers, and action.
“When you get people together like this, these collisions happen,” she said. “All of a sudden, you’re in a small group having a discussion about coding boot camps that are going to be happening at UNB, and someone’s going to say ‘I didn’t know that was happening. What kind of programming languages are they teaching? How long is the course?‘”
While the funding from the province is a big assist, Simpson notes the sector itself must help meet the training challenges identified in The Workforce Growth Plan.
“It takes a village to do this kind of work,” shared Simpson. “You’ve got to find not only the people who want to learn new skills, but also the companies who are going to hire these students.
“You’ve got to find partners who can deliver this training, and then we’ve got to get it out to the universe to say this is happening here,” she continued.
“It is really going to be an amazing couple of years of digital transformation,” said Simpson, “But no educational institution on its own can make this happen.”
Tyler Mclean is a Huddle reporter based in Fredericton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].