We Need a Step Change Increase in Trades Workers
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.
I just got home from 10 days on the road in four different hotels. The hoteliers must be thankful for the construction workforce; at breakfast every morning the room was full of big burly men (very few women) in steel-toed boots and, in many cases, already in orange or yellow gear.
Mobility has been a main feature of the construction workforce for years — particularly civil and big engineering projects. The technical trades workforce will take on projects close to home or far away depending on demand, wages, and other factors.
As shown in the graphic, there are communities in the country with 60-90 per cent more of these technical trades folks in the workforce relative to population size. For example, Estevan in Saskatchewan has 92 per cent more workers in technical trades than the nationals level (as a share of total workers).
This puts these communities at a distinct advantage when there are projects close to home.
Where does NB sit? Moncton and Fredericton are considerably below average, and Saint John is slightly above average.
Essentially, we don’t have the workforce to handle any kind of surge in demand for technical trades, so projects get put off until there is available capacity.
I believe we will need a structural increase in the number of tradespersons in New Brunswick. We are going to need at least 40-50 per cent more houses built per annum moving forward than in the recent past. Further, we will have substantial needs in the areas of industrial and energy engineering projects.
The jurisdictions that get the wind energy projects, the hydrogen projects, the SMR projects, will increasingly be the jurisdictions that have or can attract the workforce.
A passive, “wait-and-see” approach is not good enough. We should be substantially increasing the number of workers. The LQ value in Saint John, instead of being 1.05, should be 1.50 or higher. In Moncton, instead of 0.84 it should be 1.5. The problem is that would require another 3,000 specialized tradespersons in Moncton alone.
We need to get this done. It will be one of the top barriers to future economic growth.
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