Canadian Companies, Employees Need To Adapt To Fill 462,000 Vacant Jobs
DIEPPE – Both workers and employers need to be more adaptable in order to fill the 462,000 jobs vacancies nationwide, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz said at a press conference in Dieppe Thursday.
He said while Canadian companies are investing heavily in their employees, many wait for “just the right person” to fill a role instead of training people on the job. At the same time, businesses are struggling to find workers.
“I say this to companies and many of them have announced training, but it may be fairly narrow. They need to take someone that’s a little more raw or someone that has experience in, let’s say manufacturing, that may not apply at all, and yet they’re hard-working and clever and willing to adapt. This, to me, has the biggest prospect for success,” he said.
On the other hand, he noted that many new graduates become disappointed when they can’t find jobs in their field in the place they want to live in.
“I think we all need to adapt more and think of our education, not as training for a particular job, but training us how to think and be able to understand new material, so that we can take a job in a field that’s different and apply those tools in a different way,” he said.
The remarks followed Poloz’s speech to an audience of business people hosted by the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council and the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Moncton. He spoke about the impact of technological advances on the Canadian economy, which includes the displacement of workers whose jobs have become obsolete due to automation.
He said companies could take more responsibility to help train workers so they can move to the new jobs that are being created by the same digital disruptions. The government could also develop programs to make relocation of workers easier.
Unfortunately, the skills gap is often portrayed in exaggerated terms — how can a long-term factory worker be trained to write computer code, for example. This only serves to discourage people,” he said.
“The amount of adaptability [of the economy] I think is higher than most people give the system credit for. Because the new jobs that are being created are well-paying and the money gets spent, and that creates jobs in ordinary sectors,” he said to the press.
Atlantic Canada faces the most acute worker shortages in the country. A study released in September by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) showed 50 per cent of businesses across the four provinces have difficulty hiring new workers.
“But the most important part for businesses is to realize that [the labour shortage] is not for the next few months. It’s going to be around us for the next 10 years,” BDC’s Chief Economist Pierre Cléroux told Huddle at the time. “As a result, we have to deal differently, we have to think differently about recruiting, about managing our business.”
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Poloz wants more people to embrace technological changes that, in the long run, will create more jobs than are lost. In fact, available jobs didn’t only increase in the technological sectors, but also in manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, among others.
But he understands that matching workers with employers isn’t an easy task.
“I think we need a certain amount of patience. But what I was hoping to do [in my Moncton speech] is to help people understand what the underlying dynamics are and I’m hopeful that over time, fewer people will be afraid of it,” he said.
“I do feel that people are afraid of the unknown about whether their sector is the next to go automated and that they’ll lose that opportunity. I’m hopeful they’ll understand that actually there are more opportunities being created and adaptability will be the key to capitalizing on that.”
Overall, the Canadian economy has done well because of this digital disruption, he says, though it does add a layer of uncertainty as the Bank of Canada conducts its monetary policy.
“Given all the uncertainty, the Bank will continue to follow a gradual approach to raising interest rates, and remain dependent on incoming data and other sources of information to guide our decisions.”