Top Job Thursday

Where the jobs will be

Economic uncertainty, the spectre of a jobless recovery and debt crises threatening the eurozone — no economy stands immune from the instability.
But there are bright spots amid the gloom.
Jobs by the tens of thousands are opening in the Canadian mining industry — one of the top five sectors expected to be hiring in 2015, trend analysts say. Canadian job forecasters also predict employment growth in oil-and-gas, health care, construction, and information and communications technology.
The trick is to match education with employment.
On formal post-secondary education, Canada ranks No. 1 in the world, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, which calculates college and university graduates as a percentage of population.
To increase the chance of landing a post, young people training for a career — or employees re-training for a transition — might want to consider an industry whose openings are almost certain to expand. Here’s a look at some of the top spots to be in by 2015.

Health Care Services:
This sector makes everybody’s Top 5 list.
“The society is aging — everybody knows that,” said professor David Livingstone of the University of Toronto’s Centre for the Study of Education and Work.
“Therefore gerontology, the care of the aged — there will be more jobs in that area, a growing need,” he said.
Health-related occupations, from nurses to technicians, were already deemed to enjoy among the lowest unemployment rates in the country in 2010, according to a recent job-trends report by analyst Roger Sauve, of People Patterns Consulting near Cornwall.
Job prospects go way beyond doctors and nurses, said Michelle Dunnill, Toronto branch manager for the job-tracking firm Manpower. Physiotherapists, medical laboratory technologists, administrative staff and non-clinical support workers of all types are bound to be in demand.
“With increased government spending, training in health care is a great choice looking to 2015,” Dunnill said. “Health care has become one of the fastest growing and in-demand career fields in the world.”

Construction and Skilled Trades: An aging population also factors in the demand for construction workers and skilled trades, said Michael Burt, head of industrial and economic trends at the Conference Board of Canada.
“Trades workers are older, on average,” he said. “There have been fewer people going into apprenticeship programs, (creating) a healthy demand.”
Prior to the 2008 recession, the construction sector saw strong wage growth and scarcity of some types of workers, Burt said. During the recession, unemployment in the sector jumped, he said, but has since dipped below the national average.
Particularly in Manitoba and Alberta, demand for construction and skilled trades workers is expected to grow, said Manpower Group’s Dunhill.
“Heavy equipment operators, industrial mechanics, industrial electricians, building trades, steel and iron workers, automotive trades, welders,” she said to name a few types in demand.
“Economists are saying the skilled trade worker shortage may affect Canada’s ability to compete on a global market,” she said.

Information and Communications Technology: Between now and 2015, more than 120,000 jobs will have to be filled, said David Ticoll, director of the Canadian Coalition for Tomorrow’s ICT Skills.
“Half (the hires) will be to fill new positions and half will be to replace people who have left the field, due to leaving the workforce or shifting to non-ICT jobs,” he said.
Occupations waiting to be filled include designers of new technologies — cyber security and data analysis, for example — and especially management jobs that combine business and technology skills, including IT managers and chief information officers.
“The Canadian population who required computer literacy in their jobs went from around 30 per cent in the late 1980s to more than 90 per cent now,” said U of T professor Livingstone. “The interesting point is that people are more likely to say they are overqualified for the jobs available in terms of computer skills than underqualified.”
After landing a job, many Canadians face a further challenge, he said.
The next step for the overqualified is not just to adapt to the position available.
“The point would be to use whatever job you are able to get in imaginative ways,” the professor said, “to make it a richer job, a more fulfilling job in terms of your talents and, hopefully, in terms of rewards from your employer.”

Mining and Oil-and-Gas: Half the mining workforce is eligible to retire in the next 10 years, meaning that — even without growth in mining — the industry is forecast to need more than 112,000 new workers in that period.
If commodity prices rise, the mining sector would need more than 140,000 new workers in 10 years. In the oil-and-gas industry, Alberta Oil Sands expansion accounts for much of the anticipated growth.
“We expect to see (job) growth almost double the average for the economy as a whole,” Conference Board of Canada analyst Burt said this week of the mining and oil-and-gas sectors. In his analysis, the construction and health care industries fall into the same category.
Mining companies will be looking to hire for 66 key mining occupations, says the 2011 forecast by the Mining Industry Human Resources Council.
Demand is expected to be high for everybody from welders and industrial electricians, to geologists and civil engineers, to human-resources and financial managers, the report says.

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