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Category: Apprenticeships, Skills & Trades

More Data on Skills Shortages

I’ve been doing some work on skills shortages recently, and came across this adorable little document from HRSDC.  It’s their employment projections for the period 2011-2021, and its conclusion is pretty unequivocal: we do not have major skills shortages in Canada, nor are we going to have them anytime soon. This prediction is based on something called COPS – the Canadian Occupation Projection System.  COPS makes long-term employment projections on an occupation-by-occupation basis, based on the major components of supply (new

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April 22, 2013 3 Comments

Poor Barista, Rich Tradesperson

Many of you were kind enough to write in about my series on the relative value of Arts degrees versus trades, certifications, and the associated piece, which appeared in the Globe online.  I just wanted to finish off that series with a thought on how these memes are being propagated.  There are two points that I want to note, specifically. The first is that the “BAs vs. welders” argument is always carried-out by a curious and unbalanced mix of anecdotes and data. 

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March 27, 2013 2 Comments

Skills Shortages (Part 2)

As I noted yesterday, much of the talk about skills shortages in Canada is data-free, and factually-challenged.  What, for instance, are we to make of claims that we have a huge shortage of people in the construction trades, when even a simple look at Labour Force Survey data tells a very different story? Unemployment by Industry, 2007-2012               Yeah, that’s right: workers in the social sciences, education, and government fields (mostly university graduates) have

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March 20, 2013 2 Comments

Skills Shortages (Part 1)

OK, apparently this week I’m going to have to talk about skills shortages, because it seems that people in Ottawa have LOST THEIR EVER-LOVING MINDS on the subject. The basics of the policy discussion are as follows: Canada currently has an unemployment rate of about 7.5%, which is deemed too high.  Despite there being roughly 6 unemployed people for every job vacancy, there are some jobs which are going unfilled because of skills shortages.  This, everyone can probably agree, is

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March 19, 2013 11 Comments

Apprenticeships: Time for Quality over Quantity

We have a problem with skilled trades and apprenticeships in Canada.  At the root of it are three things: short-term thinking, bad forecasting, and a training schedule driven by money over pedagogy. Short-termism is embedded in Canadian apprenticeships.  When the economy is booming, we take on more apprentices; when it’s in the tank, we cut back.  This is because “enrolment” is based entirely on decentralized private sector demand for young, cheap labour.   Given that finishing an apprenticeship takes four or

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March 13, 2013 No Comments
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One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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