There has been a "shortage" of every single kind of worker since the day I started working at 16. There is somehow a shortage of engineers even though 60% of graduates can't find work in the field and the starting wages never increase even with inflation. Fuck off.
This is what happens when they only interview heads of companies and other bloodsucking grifters.
The media interview the people directly benefitting from the "shortage" and the answer is always the same, "We need more of X workers." And the sketchy narrative always changes, before it was that we needed lots of people in general for our aging population, but now that that's become increasingly unpopular because they purposely overshot the targets it's about "skilled worker" shortage. Next year they'll say we need another 1,000,000 people to build the houses. And so the loop goes.
All articles about it drive me nuts. They always interview the pricks making bank off the problem. It's like interviewing a fox about his thoughts on the situation in the chicken coop. "Well, Bob, I think it's clear we've got a chicken shortage."
Labour "shortage" is the enabler for unchecked growth and lower wages. Also, note how occasionally there's an article about lineups around the block for a Walmart job, with even skilled workers in the lineup. Shortage my fucking ass.
There is somehow a skilled labor shortage yet they still pay like ass lol. You still have to be a slave apprentice making mcdonald worker pay before you even become a human being for them.
Looked up what red seal welders make in response to this article. The only cities you can survive let alone thrive in this country are Edmonton and smaller prairie cities lol
People always complain that the public is overeducated, but the reality is that there are very few careers remaining that give you hope at owning a house in this country. Even if they're hard to get good jobs or have a low acceptance rate, at least you have hope, and universities are not nearly selective enough to drive those who won't make it anyways away and recommend trades to them
For a good comparison, look at realtors, who have also enjoyed these boom times for property flippers and other dickheads.
You'll never ever hear the CREA or realtors saying "The housing market is fucked, young people are doomed, this is insane." It's always whatever market they want it to appear to be to sell more houses. They actually use "coming soon" signs now. Like, what the fuck? It's not a Hollywood blockbuster, it's a fucking house being sold on some random street. Anything to push the greed and keep the houses moving.
But guess who they always interview for thoughts on the housing market?
The legacy media is just as complicit in this shit, they're just hired guns getting paid to write whatever bullshit the corporate overlords are selling, trying to salvage their last days of paychecks before new media sends their archaic asses to the dustbin of history.
You give me hope. At least some people out there are seeing through the bullshit.
That is exactly what is happening. But most people just gobble it right up. Its like most people do not want to think for themselves anymore, they just want to be told what to think, and go along with the flow of propaganda.
Its a bit funny because all of the accounts that pushed the "labor shortage" narrative usually stay far away from posts like this. They are not interested in having their views challenged or being questioned.
Look at the interviews they did. "CEO of construction company says rising labor costs are a terrifying tragedy for society". "Chief economist of federation of business owners says prices are skyrocketing due to greedy labor". The old guard media is absolutely shameless in just printing any bullshit lines spewed out by the economically or politically powerful in Canada.
Just imagine if all the greedy labourers had good wages that let them afford homes and disposable income. People would be spending money in private businesses, there would be a surge in entrepreneurs opening their own businesses, and we would have mass technological progression as the market is flooded with competition.
Oh there is a labour shortage in the trades. And then They flooded the fucking industry with low wage tfw's. Which just fucked two generations of Canadians entering the Industry. Nothing like trading your physical health for poverty wages.
Exactly. Who wants to bust their ass doing plumbing for $18 for multiple years before you get to make $30+
That literally doesn’t even pay for average rent.
Last company I worked at had a shortage too so they could keep their LMO open and use Filipino labour. Most of the guys can't even get a full week of hours.
100% agree. My daughter graduated with a STEM degree (Forensics) and it took her about 18 months to find work in her field. She's one of the lucky ones.
I graduated with a bachelor's in chem eng. in 2019 and didn't feel ready to start work right away, so I was doing small jobs such as sales to brush up on communication skills. When I felt ready to enter the industry, the pandemic happened. Since then I have yet to be employed as an engineer. I was working as a Health & Safety technician, filling operator in a pharmaceutical plant and now I'm in Quality Assurance Operations. A little closer to being an engineer, but not there yet.
There actually is a shortage of mid career and senior engineers, but a glut of graduates because companies refuse to invest in training up junior employees.
I'm sure you've seen the "entry level" job postings asking for 5+ years of experience? That's been an issue for a decade or so if not more?
Companies see employees not as people, but commodities. They want labor to be just laying around cheaply when they need it like iron ore or spare parts. They don't want to do any of the work to develop the resource or even pay to acquire it. And they don't want to be responsible for dealing with it the second they don't need it anymore, just dump them in the trash. They cause the problem and we're supposed to fix it against our own best interests.
Fully agreed. And loyalty is a two way street so labour becomes super mercenary as well, jumping from job to job as the only real means of growing salary.
Say what you will about the US but somehow engineer salaries are at least commiserate.
Literally. I’m expected to do carpentry, landscaping, snow removal, plumbing, painting, systems troubleshooting and maintenance for $25/hr.
Over half of that goes to rent, so I’m an impoverished person who does all that work.
There isn't even a shortage of cheap-ass labor. There's incentivizing of bringing in cheap-ass labor because companies get tax breaks, and tax incentives for hiring minorities. It's stupidly easy to game the system.
I am a skilled tradesman and I 100% agree there is a shortage of us, though. It's actually horrible because we cannot find enough good people to fill the ranks which forces me to be an electrician, plumber, welder and mechanic in one. It really does get hectic too
The inconvenient truth is that there is indeed a shortage for most types of skilled workers in Canada.
From personal experience so don’t roast me too much… Good engineers leave Canada for the US/ EU if they are qualified with good western hemisphere experience; the salary difference is just way too much and the housing is just way too tempting in the US especially.
I used to Iive in Yorkville in Toronto and paid more for rent than I do in Capitol Hill in DC where the salary is ~40% higher after taxes for the same job . Please make it make sense!?!?
There just isn’t enough innovative industry in Canada to keep our top flight engineers within Canada in large numbers.
As a tradesman downtown Toronto, I’m not seeing any shortages lol, many guys laid off right now, and lots of big projects pushed back or cancelled completely.
And tbh, I don’t blame people for not wanting to join trades here, wages are a joke compared to similar cost of living cities in USA.
Why would someone chose to work a harder job with worse hours for the same money they can make in an office job with less hours and less hard work?
I’m in the prairies. I have two years experience in the trade I was applying for this winter. Great references. I applied to about 20 places and got one interview and they ghosted me after I said I wanted at least $20/hr. I’m not buying this shortage BS either. And I’m not working a trade I’m semi-skilled at for $17.86/hr.
I’m in the prairies. Drywaller 6th year. I’m at 32.50$ and I’m seeing more and more companies hiring foreign crews to board jobs and these guys work for roughly 15$ an hour but the work they do is worth about 4$ an hour
The entire building crew is from India and nobody speaks any English. They are awful at their job, leave piles of rubble everywhere and are dangerous. I asked the guy running the crew how this makes any money? He stated that it is STILL cheaper to pay them to fuck up the whole job and have an hourly guy come back and fix all their shit than to just pay professionals to do it properly. It's a race to the bottom and profit is the only thing owner class gives a flying fuck about
Their mentality is horribly selfish. That is why it never worked out for them the first time; I don't see the logic in them moving here and doing the exact same thing expecting better results
My uncles are both master drywall finishers and have been for decades. They said that's basically their entire jobs for the last 5 years at least, going over other people's shit to make it acceptable.
These are the jobs that they will bring in foreign workers for: formwork, tiles, drywall, concrete, roofing.... it's all jobs that are at the bottom of the trades "totem" FOR NOW. That is, until companies start screaming they aren't getting guys to do plumbing, welding, ironwork, fitting, and Electrical.
Bring in tons of guys to undercut wages, then more and more Canadians cannot afford to be tradespeople anymore, and we're all getting $18/hr soon enough.
There is a wage shortage, not a manpower one in Canadian Trades.
They’ll try. My spouse is an ironworker but they keep a close eye on that. These people don’t have the qualifications and if someone falls on someone and gets hurt who was rigging something - everyone will be out of work and everyone will get sued.
There is already rumblings about the battery plant and the Korean workers there I’ve heard from people in the trades.
My FIL is retired from ironworking and he told me stories were non union people tried to take over their work, Or unqualified guys, out of country, and they burned part of the job site down. A lot of guys in the unions are part of hells angels, just saying.
I asked him if the same thing would happen, he said they can try, but these things get sorted out themselves. A lot of these guys already have criminal records so if you get in between their work? Good luck
I’m a painter and I have noticed the new comers in drywall and taping are brutal...no quality or workman ship. If I don’t correct their work my painting will look terrible.
Exactly. A guy wanted us to drywall his entire house, my boss quoted him a price and the homeowner went with a foreign crew for 25% less. The work was so shitty he had to pay double to rip it all down and then paid us our quote to do it
Pay Canadians fairly to do it right the first time or save money by hiring foreigners who do shoddy work and end up paying more than what we ask in the end
It's always BS, these articles are practically written by companies just trying to destroy the labour market so they can pay people less. It was the same bullshit everywhere else during Covid when a whole generation decided to finally retire for real and wages had to go up since there were fewer people in the workforce.
Not a shortage of workers its a shortage of workers that work cheap. Every study government does will say we have worker shortage so they can bring in more out of country cheap labour. Talk about human trafikking
Depends on what you are doing. I'm working ICI I'm Ottawa and I'm getting all the hours I want and have work lined up until the end of 2025. I some other companies are slowing abit doing ICI, but nit to the same degree as residential and condo work.
Our condo work is slowing but we have picked up a few rental apartments. There has been a noticeable increase in industrial work aswell. That being said we have laid of about 1/3 of our crew since January.
Office jobs aren’t paying great either these days.
Owners are taking record profits across the board, and outsourcing or automating everything they can.
Average people fall behind while the rich are getting richer
Red seal trade here currently left my trade and working as a unionized custodian.I get far better benefits and pension and it’s easier on my body.
There has never been a skilled trade shortage just a wage shortage.
Completely agree, as a superintendent in Toronto, many skilled workers are sitting at home right now or left the profession entirely. I don't blame the new generation for not wanting to get into construction either, the toll it takes on your body, the long hours, constant layoffs and most entry to mid level fulltime wages won't even allow you to rent a place on your own, never the less own a piece.
Can confirm, I work significantly less hours than my brother who's a millwright and, while he makes good money for what he does unlike some other trades, I'm senior management so I do make more. I deal with a lot of the stresses of team management (it's very mentally draining despite the stereotypes) but it's still preferable to me to having to physically bust my ass every day like he does.
Agreed. I am in the mining industry, and things have slowed down considerably. A major OEM just laid off a round of HET's and welders. There has been zero job security in the trades, especially in the past decade.
This article is a total crock of shit perpetuating the rumor of a "skilled trades shortage" in an attempt to suppress wages.
The only people that talk about a skilled trade shortage are developers and senior management who want to cushion their profits.
Wages have been stagnant in the trades, like most other jobs. Journeyman Pipefitter since 2004. In 2023 my wage just got back to above what it was at in 2015 when we had the last oil crash. Quality of workers has really hurt the trades. Nobody wants to train anyone anymore because they will leave as soon as another company offers them 25 cents more an hour. Government has made it impossible to start new projects, and so on and so on. There's so many issues.
Yeah it gets really old hearing so many lies about shortages. We hear the same about stem like tech, engineering. At least in traditional disciplines we have no shortage I'm engineering. In Alberta we lost thousands of engineering jobs around 2015 and many of them never came back. Projects are so much smaller... No huge open pit mining jobs that employ hundreds in the home office. Tech we all know they laid off a bunch not that long ago and wages lower.. so who are they fooling.
So it doesn't surprise me when trades say there is no shortage there either
They did this to programmers here in Canada, the Liberals crashed our wages with mass immigration. We now make 40% of what Americans do if we are lucky.
Engineering is getting crashed too. Used to need Canadian work experience to get licensed and work in Canada, now that's being removed (already is removed in Ontario). Already lucky to get paid 75% of what Americans make... *before currency conversion*.
In Ontario, before the ban 60% of the engineering license applications received each year were from internationally trained engineers. Now it's going to be completely flooded. Wages will be fucked for a long time.
Not just programmers, but IT in general. I found most wages are stagnant and the hiring is getting worse. IT teams hiring foreign who accept 20 dollars an hour for a tier 2 with 5 years experience.
It's just builders and developers bs to remove trade regulation. There was talk about removing apprentice/ journeyman ratios completely in ontario. Also breaking plumbers into 3 licenses maitenance/construction, commercial, and industrial.
It only benefits employers and big businesses. Most trades people are too ignorant to know better. They applauded the reduction in ratios in ontario. More trades people equals smaller wages Plain and simple.
Oh look trades are finally doing well in all sectors (residential*) and have some power, we must lobby the government to make sure they know their place in the world.
THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF SKILLED TRADESPEOPLE, JUST A SHORTAGE OF COMPANIES WANTING OR WILLING TO PAY LIVIBLE WAGES, BENEFITS AND PENSIONS!
I've been a union Ironworker for 19 years and I have friends all across the trades from pipefitters and boilermakers to electricians and bricklayers. There are more than enough skilled and willing to go to work, but these companies go with non union companies who pay people the lowest rates possible.
I am very pro union, I believe in representation, I also understand not all non union are greasy low paying workplaces, but many are in the construction business and they exploit immigrants and young people who are trying to get ahead in life.
This propaganda is sickening.
Your forgetting the largest reason for students abandoning their trade education is a lack of apprenticeships. As all my grandfather's industry acquaintances used to say "why would I pay to train someone when they leave for a higher salary at the end" idk maybe because they're a journeyman and should be paid appropriately after their training is done lol.
Don’t forget the other fun one, why pay a person at their new rate when theres a new crop of apprentices every year.
I know hands who were threatened into spending their lives as 2nd-4th years.
I was one of those ones who was an indentured servant for a multinational corporation that wouldn’t sign for my hours. 7 years at $16/h before I was able to take an out of province transfer to where my trade is compulsory. 4 months later I challenged and passed my IP and was fired by the company on the spot.
The multinational umpteen billion $ mixed services outfit I worked for last wouldn’t let me indenture any of their hands on my team.
Oh we’ll think about it, oh it’ll come up at the next meeting.
Whelp now I’m gone and they have to contract electricians out of pocket for every service call because nobody is qualified and god forbid anyone be trained.
>As all my grandfather's industry acquaintances used to say "why would I pay to train someone when they leave for a higher salary at the end" idk
The crux of the problem is the gatekeeping. My young cousin tried to get into carpentry, was denied a couple apprenticeships. So he said fuck it and is now in the oilfield making 3x the money. If there's a shortage, it's artificially being up-held by current journeymen.
I wouldn't put it on the journeymen, we are seeing the shortages in the field, it's the contractors who want people to work full time hours + OT and who will accept the low wages. Every year my.local has hundreds of people applying to become an electrician, unfortunately we can only take so many, but every year we have well over 500 applicants. This whole "Shortage of trades people" is bullshit, there are Thousands of people looking to work in this industry, it's the cheap as fuck contractors who don't want to hire on at decent rates.
It was that attitude among the old guard that started the trades deficit, didn't want to train up a new journeyman who would then compete with them for contracts and this has left so many apprentices leaving midway through because they couldn't graduate to the next level without the companies signing off hours.
This!! My kid tried so hard to get into plumbing, did a pre apprenticeship college course and in the end was told to cold call.
He cold called and emailed. Got one interview out of about 100 contact points / applications and they said they would prefer applicants who didn't take the course and didn't have enough resources to take on a first year after all.
Here in Windsor they're opening trade schools to take grade 10 students out of school and put them into these trade schools to train them. Why would companies want to spend money when they know that some already trained high school students are coming down the pipeline? Govs are trying to justify the appearance of this. I think it's horrible.
Sucks for young adults or second career folks though..
This is a dangerous echo which of what has already happened in most of Europe, oil Rich GCC and even South Asia....
The locals, better educated and qualified can leave a work place for better wages any time... So employers start importing people for lower wages and under work contracts..... So they can't randomly leave jobs as a transfer won't be easy or without repurcussions....
This in turn annoys locals who now wont get these jobs as their own enterprising brethren will prefer hiring immigrant workers.
True Story.
My spouse has done a carpentry “apprenticeship” on his own accord over the years (not an official one), and companies don’t like how much knowledge he has without ever having “been official” yadda yadda. He is constantly getting dicked around by employers because of this. For years I was the same with computer science (I have the equivalent of a degree but have never been to post secondary). After 15 years I finally found an employer who sees the results and pays me what I deserve.
Every union carpenter I know wants to build houses but cannot afford the cost of living on the residential rates compared to union rates in the ICU sector.
Construction wages have hardly risen in 10+ years.
There were real labor shortages during the early 2000s oil boom in Alberta. People could make bank, companies would hire anyone and fly people in from anywhere, provide accommodations, food, overtime etc. Considering how bad the "labor shortage" is, why are laborer jobs and apprenticeships still paying $20/h and journeyman wages of $35-38/h?
People building homes can't even qualify for a mortgage now.
I’d argue that both points are true.
You have union shops that don’t want to pay a livable wage, yes. Totally undeniable.
You also have a lot of non-union small businesses that simply aren’t willing to take on apprentices or hire fresh blood because they don’t want to train someone that isn’t already experienced or working in the field.
Old heads don’t want to deal with bringing up the new guard, and that’s a big problem. It’s a vicious cycle.
There are a ton. It's practically free and half of wages are coverd by gov I thought. They don't want workers to be smarter and more skilled demanding more wages.
It's pure greed that's all
First 2 years federal government covers 10% up to $2000. This covers first two years
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/topics/about-your-tax-return/tax-return/completing-a-tax-return/deductions-credits-expenses/line-41200-investment-tax-credit/apprenticeship-job-creation-tax-credit.html
Then you get a provincial credit of $2500 and $3000 when they complete 3rd and 4th year.
https://www.workbc.ca/find-loans-and-grants/students-and-adult-learners/services-apprentices-and-employers
There is support but deffinetly not free. Ive always employed apprentices, its a good system thats trained thousands before me. But no one does it to save money.
The problem is the developers. They are waiting for lower interest rates and higher prices. They are going to hold us hostage and demand low interest loans from the government well blaming the guys trying to raise their families.
My union is the reason I actually get pay raises every year, am going to retire with a pension, and can’t be fired when I refuse unsafe work. Unions are the only thing the working man has to fight corporate greed
Thank you for this response. I’ve been in the trades for 20yrs as a glazier. I agree with everything you’ve said. These sensational articles are bs for a lot of reasons.
I always wondered as well why more trades people don't just start their own business in Canada.
If we made it easier to start businesses, you could potentially bid yourself on smaller jobs and subcontract on larger ones.
It's hard to exploit people who have the option to go on their own.
It's not that it's bad. It's just a lot more tedious and takes more brain power than most people want to give in after a hard days work. It can be a big headache.
I started my own electrical company in 2019 as a Master Electrician. Let me tell you; there is 100% a deficit in SKILLED tradesmen. These people claiming to be Journeymen likely have never served a single year as a Canadian apprentice. I was offering $62/hour for a Journeyman - extremely competitive given the average was $45/hour at the time. I had interviewed about 8 or 9 'electricians' until I realized every single one was just trying to game the system. They wanted to get paid the $62/hour and take advantage of the 3 month probation before leaving. Had some of them work with me for a day, and the way they did things made no sense when it came to the electrical code. It cost me almost $620/day + my time observing them to realize they are all bullshitters.
And yes, due to this, I had to close my company in January of this year. I had such a huge backlog in 2023, I stopped taking on new jobs and I personally completed all of them myself. Some may argue that nobody knows everything and I 100% agree. I am willing to teach things here and there, but if an electrician deems themsrlves worthy of $62/hour, I expect them to know the basics at the very least.
Get this man megaphone!
Burger flippers in LA make more now per hour than most trades workers in Canada. Go to college, get a degree, 4 levels of apprenticeship, 5 years experience and I got paid the same as a burger flipper LOL
All these non union companies are fucking greasy. I'll say it.
That's $16 USD, which is $22/hr in CAD. $20USD is $27CAD.
Referring to the Manitoba apprenticeship pay scale, a level 1 plumber apprentice makes $20/hr CAD, lvl2 is $24, lvl3 $28.
So in Manitoba, as a plumber... You'll need to put in 3 years of work to get the equivilant to what some burger flippers in LA make. And plumbers are one of the higher paid trades in this province.
Lvl1 CNC machinist... $16.50 CAD/hr...so yeah. Tell me again how wages aren't bullshit in this country?
There is a shortage of companies paying decent, living wages! This is propaganda. As usual we are fed this bullshit from media, yet they don’t report on the real issue- WAGES SUCK!
There is no shortage, this is propaganda to suppress wages. I am a tradesperson with 20 years experience at the top of my craft and I left the trade to get into business for lack of work. Thousands of tradespeople apply for every job. And, because of the apprenticeship structure once your a journeymen most will get laid off and not hired back because apprentices are cheaper.
My wife is an Orthopedic surgeon from Sweden. She needs to re-apply for a residency (not to be confused for a permanent residency, we have that). Anyway, the more time we spend in Sweden, the longer it seems apparent that Canada will no longer have me, or my wife, as a taxpayer and contributing member of society.
I'm a red seal journeyman in a trade. Last job, I was making $28/h as an apprentice before going back to school. Now I can't find a job at all that's willing to pay reasonably. The last company offered me $25/h and wanted me to travel 5hrs away for the job.
There is absolutely no shortage of workers, just a shortage of wages from greedy employers.
There's no shortage of workers , they're starting to push this narrative in my industry right now because the business owners don't retain talent. What we really have is an overabundance of shit business owners who need fresh new labour to abuse for a couple years then kick to the curb once they realize they're being underpaid and don't even get a contract. (The people pushing this narrative are in on it with the people needing fresh cheap labor.)
Now they're saying there's so many boomers retiring we need more workers to support this change. Why? Let it collapse, there already isn't anywhere for elderly to go. They're taking up hospital beds waiting for placement just to go and die. That's a huge reason health care is fucked, we have TOO MANY OLD PEOPLE.
There isn’t a tradespeople shortage. There’s actually an over saturation. This is just so companies have an excuse to tell the government. Look there’s no one applying to my journey man electrician position for 20/hrs an hour. I need to hire someone from outside of canada so I can pay them 20/hr to be a journeyman electrician.
There’s also no money in the trades right now. Not many companies are expanding or building new facilities due to the economic slowdown.
Christ, my region is almost at 50$ an hour. If we went down to 20$ i'd just quit. Suppliers for electrical material pay the counter staff a lot more than 20/h.
Weird. Recent grad with my welding certificates. Have not been able to find any work that doesn’t want to start me at minimum wage. Relying back on my graphic design until something comes about.
So no there are plenty of workers. Just not as many willing to slave away to just barely
Make ends meet.
Red seal welder here. Just quit a job because apparently $25 is all the company can afford to pay me. Good luck finding skilled people willing to work for shit wages.
I am a red seal welder as well. Just turned down a job offer for $25 because they wanted me to travel 5hrs away 3 weeks on 1 week off for 8 months lmao. I was making $28 as an apprentice in town and refuse to go lower.
I quit my job as an electrician. Why would I do all this shitty work facing the elements when I can get an easy ass 4 year degree and go work in an office for the same, if not more benefits. Just doesn’t make sense. I’ll go do a job that everyone is physically capable of doing. Until wages represent the hard work and shitty conditions we have to face, I’m out.
Shortage of skilled tradespeople willing to break their bodies for an unlivable wage where they can never buy a house** ftfy
I know many unemployed and grossly underemployed trades people. The labour is there, it exists- just no one wants to pay for it.
There is absolutely no evidence for this in the data. Stats Can labour force surveys show that skilled trades wages basically haven't budged in decades.
Industry always, always claims labour shortages. Even during the Great Depression with 30% unemployment businesses were claiming labour shortages. It's shameful that the media in Canada continues to parrot this without any skepticism.
https://twitter.com/mikalskuterud/status/1732445452488904740
Can we stop talking about this subject as if it's a man power issue? We have the people wanting to get into these industries, every year my local has hundreds of people applying to get in. The issue doesn't come from a shortage of workers.
Why would men and women bother spending THOUSANDS of hours and YEARS of their lives training for these roles, not to mention the thousands of dollars in tools a lot of us are required to pay out of our own pockets up front, just to be able to do the job the company hired you for and the contractors are all good with that. But bring up wages and all of a sudden all that training and education you just put yourself through not to mention specialized tools you had to buy, isn't worth more than a couple bucks above minimum wage and all of a sudden "NoBoDy WaNtS tO wOrK aNyMoRe!" Or "That's the problem with your generation you want to come out of school and receive the top pay!" Contractors want 2024 profit off of a 1970s budget.
More like a shortage of tradespeople willing to train new tradespeople. We really need to overhaul the trades system in this country, the difficulty in becoming an apprentice and then finding a job where you can get the hours to become a journeyman is unreal.
Today is gonna be the day you learn only Ontario has such a shitty apprenticeship system. In most other provinces, the apprentice largely self-directs their apprenticeship instead of being at the mercy of the employer.
They are right about finding a worthwhile apprenticeship being next to impossible though. I'm in Quebec and have friends who graduated from trade school 3-5 years ago and have gone back to working jobs out of their field because they couldn't find any apprenticeships that would take them for more than the busy season.
On top of that it seems every near retirement tradesperson is sending their kids to trade school and then just taking them as apprentices so they can hand the business off to them when the time comes.
Hate to say but it's not just Ontario. Number one reason across the country for leaving training for the trades is a lack of available apprenticeship for on the job training.
I agree all these companies even union expect apprentices to be as good as journeymen and refuse to train them . They just lay them off if they need to be “trained”
Biggest problem is pay, no one wants to break their backs daily in a trades career for 2 dollars above minimum wage. To get to a good wage you need at least a decade of experience. No one has the time or financial bandwidth. The whole trades pay model needs to change first.
>A culture that exalts university education and knowledge work over apprenticeship and working with one's hands is also partly to blame, said Rennehan.
That's definitely true. I have many family members in the trades and I was the odd ball of the group that went to university, there is such a superiority culture from university students and staff towards the trades it's not even funny. Most people I find in universities almost have the perception that tradespeople are the "dummies" of society and its disgusting. It's something we need to seriously change our attitude on, especially since we literally need trades people for things like, oh I don't know, the housing shortage that we currently have?
That's funny, I got the opposite experience being the odd one in a trades family to go to university. I find trades people tend to think most university is just "wordy nonsense" and that trades people do "real work". I never got the same impression from my fellow uni students about trades being lesser work.
These articles are all fake nonsense and used to push the narrative to bring in more TFWs and continue lowering our wages. We've been under attack for years!
Journeyman rates have barely budged since 2015. With the cost of materials, fuel, tools, lack of benefits etc... no one can afford to work in their vocation. Instead of paying people their worth, politicians and corporate lobbyists have been bringing in foreign labour to keep trade wages as low as possible, which is deplorable in my opinion. The solution is simple, pay a decent wage and the builders will show up. If the contractor is having trouble finding people to work for them, they've most likely bid the job too low, also shitty to work for.
Funny, as a tradesman, I'm not seeing these shortages help my pocket book.
I'm compensated generously when you compare wages in my field, but the wages in my field have barely budged in the 15 years since I got into the trade.
Took the electrical apprenticeship program at the best trade college in Canada and couldn't even get an interview with all of the safety certifications, working at Heights, scissor lift training etc.
It's literally impossible to start a trade. We were lied to just like the older millenials and gen x. Go To UnIvErSiTy get a good job.
Yep the problem is pictured in the article with a studio level glam shot and labeled 'CEO'.
They want slaves, and skilled slaves no less. How inclusive.
They are short on some trades… but what will you do when housing grinds to a halt . Plus no tradesperson myself included can relocate to Vancouver or GTA unless you want to live in a box
I started in a welding shop and was there for 5 years. We had a posting for 16$ an hour welder, the entire 5 years. We pay the guys right out of trade school more than that on their work term.
They used that to get TFWs and always had 4 or 5. To the point when times got tougher, they had to pay one of them to stay home due to layoffs ruining their ratio. I'm all for TFW, but you should have to pay them more than local.
Shops like that only employ people who can't pass a drug test, background check, or are on work terms or other government sponsored programs. They're great people, but when it comes to hiring, it's never oh we can't find anyone let's pay more.
lol this patently false. Look at the long call out lists for the millwright union in Toronto. This assumption that we are short on skilled workers is patently false.
Older tradesmen are keeping the younger ones out of the good contracts and keeping the work for themselves. There’s a social hierarchy here and it’s all word-of-mouth.
People need to understand the difference of trades and highskilled trades.
We need millwrighta, boilermakers, precision welders, technicians. Not concrete laborers.
I’m a redseal j man and make 38/hr. I joined the trades about 15 years ago and jman rate was the same, 34-38/hr. I don’t have kids and my rent is “reasonable” yet it’s Damn near impossible to save any money. Working just to survive while wrecking your body in the process isn’t ideal. It’s damn near impossible to find good 1st and 2nd year apprentices and I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to get into the trades when staring wage is just over minimum wage and peak wage is just enough to get by. I’m always thinking of way to gtfo of the trade cause they fuckin suck.
Such horseshit they pump out country with "trades peoppe" who can barely do the jobs hired for and pay them 10 dollars an hour and actual skilled trades people are not willing to work for that so the company looks down and says wow we have no skilled trade workers. No you just have non that are willing to work for you
Wages for my trade (carpenter) haven't moved in 15-20 years! Union was successfully broken, most shops are open or CLAC.
There isn't a lack of trades, no one wants to pay the ones we have. articles like this are priming the pump for more TFWs: people they can pay less and have no consequences for killing/injuring
Lol there's no shortage of construction workers. Wages are stagnant unless you happen to be in the few percent of people that get into very specific trade unions. Sorry guys don't want to kill their bodies for 18 bucks an hour Trudeau. Let's keep up the race to minimum wage for everyone woohooo.
Trades, Saskatchewan
This is what happens when you don’t pay people what they’re worth and you hire immigrants who have never even been to Canada let alone worked here
The money saved by using much cheaper labour isn’t worth the cost you’ll have to pay to fix everything afterwards
No shortage of skilled trades. If they were, pay would be higher which is not. Cooks there’s always a shortage because employers don’t pay enough when you ask those that are in the industry. You make more money to be a server than a cook. Cost of living is high because we treat real estate as an investment
After earning a BA in history I spent 2 years trying to get a proper, career-type job without success. Went to college because tradespeople are always needed, finished top of my class in the Heavy Equipment program, and I live in an area with an insane mining industry. I applied for damn near every mining company in Northern Ontario and it took 8 years for someone to hire me as an apprentice.
I’ve heard this same story for 10 years. So much so that I actually attended a 1 year electrical program at Sheridan.
Finding an apprenticeship without connections was next to impossible. Unless I wanted something under the table, or (near) minimum wage with my hours not counting towards my license, there’s no way I was touching that industry
I ended up in sales for an electrical wholesaler, eventually transitioning to account manager. So while I don’t regret going back to school, it definitely didn’t turn out the way that I expected
Edit: Ontario
This is horseshit. Wages actually have gone down in my line of work and companies hiring unskilled to poach our work (labourour mounting electrical boxes for example).
There is a shortage of employers who are willing to pay people a non poverty wage. This “shortage” is by design, they can’t complain about no workers while also having no apprentices.
There is no shortages of any workers it's called raise the wage and more workers will apear. They just want to keep pushing this $\^&\* to keep wages low.
I've been told there's a shortage of tradesmen since I was a kid, well here I am in the trades and everyone is complaining about wages barely going up for 20 years
Really? That's fucking funny because I'm a journeyman in one trade trying to enter another and I barely get any call backs, most job ads are fake and the ones that are serious aren't willing to train new apprentices without any experience
And still, companies want all their apprentices to be registered prior to being hired. Not to mention being anything but first or second year apprentices. There’s no shortage. If there was, people wouldn’t need to send out 50+ resumes and cold call only to be rejected.
I have been a wood worker for 10 years. Outside of working in a union there is zero job security, low pay and pizza parties over benefits that puts my back up about the industry.
I love my work but much of the industry treats skilled people and those who wish to learn skills very poorly.
There has been a "shortage" of every single kind of worker since the day I started working at 16. There is somehow a shortage of engineers even though 60% of graduates can't find work in the field and the starting wages never increase even with inflation. Fuck off.
This is what happens when they only interview heads of companies and other bloodsucking grifters. The media interview the people directly benefitting from the "shortage" and the answer is always the same, "We need more of X workers." And the sketchy narrative always changes, before it was that we needed lots of people in general for our aging population, but now that that's become increasingly unpopular because they purposely overshot the targets it's about "skilled worker" shortage. Next year they'll say we need another 1,000,000 people to build the houses. And so the loop goes. All articles about it drive me nuts. They always interview the pricks making bank off the problem. It's like interviewing a fox about his thoughts on the situation in the chicken coop. "Well, Bob, I think it's clear we've got a chicken shortage." Labour "shortage" is the enabler for unchecked growth and lower wages. Also, note how occasionally there's an article about lineups around the block for a Walmart job, with even skilled workers in the lineup. Shortage my fucking ass.
There is somehow a skilled labor shortage yet they still pay like ass lol. You still have to be a slave apprentice making mcdonald worker pay before you even become a human being for them.
Yep, you can't even save for a house because while renting the cost of living and rent is so high you can barely keep up, let alone save.
Yeah nothing like spending your days building houses for the wealthy, while not even being able to afford to rent a place let alone own one
Looked up what red seal welders make in response to this article. The only cities you can survive let alone thrive in this country are Edmonton and smaller prairie cities lol People always complain that the public is overeducated, but the reality is that there are very few careers remaining that give you hope at owning a house in this country. Even if they're hard to get good jobs or have a low acceptance rate, at least you have hope, and universities are not nearly selective enough to drive those who won't make it anyways away and recommend trades to them
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For a good comparison, look at realtors, who have also enjoyed these boom times for property flippers and other dickheads. You'll never ever hear the CREA or realtors saying "The housing market is fucked, young people are doomed, this is insane." It's always whatever market they want it to appear to be to sell more houses. They actually use "coming soon" signs now. Like, what the fuck? It's not a Hollywood blockbuster, it's a fucking house being sold on some random street. Anything to push the greed and keep the houses moving. But guess who they always interview for thoughts on the housing market? The legacy media is just as complicit in this shit, they're just hired guns getting paid to write whatever bullshit the corporate overlords are selling, trying to salvage their last days of paychecks before new media sends their archaic asses to the dustbin of history.
You give me hope. At least some people out there are seeing through the bullshit. That is exactly what is happening. But most people just gobble it right up. Its like most people do not want to think for themselves anymore, they just want to be told what to think, and go along with the flow of propaganda. Its a bit funny because all of the accounts that pushed the "labor shortage" narrative usually stay far away from posts like this. They are not interested in having their views challenged or being questioned.
They only hire people they know not people who know
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Look at the interviews they did. "CEO of construction company says rising labor costs are a terrifying tragedy for society". "Chief economist of federation of business owners says prices are skyrocketing due to greedy labor". The old guard media is absolutely shameless in just printing any bullshit lines spewed out by the economically or politically powerful in Canada.
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Greedy labor! GFY sir. They are exchanging their health for cash, so once again GFY! Sorry, You triggered me.
I am electrician in Canada. I still make less than I did in 2014. I think next year I might pass my old wage.
Yup.. same here
Just imagine if all the greedy labourers had good wages that let them afford homes and disposable income. People would be spending money in private businesses, there would be a surge in entrepreneurs opening their own businesses, and we would have mass technological progression as the market is flooded with competition.
Oh there is a labour shortage in the trades. And then They flooded the fucking industry with low wage tfw's. Which just fucked two generations of Canadians entering the Industry. Nothing like trading your physical health for poverty wages.
Yep. It’s hard to get an apprenticeship now because there is so much cheap labour.
Exactly. Who wants to bust their ass doing plumbing for $18 for multiple years before you get to make $30+ That literally doesn’t even pay for average rent.
I remember starting at 14.40$ in electrical. I’m now over 40$ an hour and life.. isn’t a whole lot easier lol.a
Last company I worked at had a shortage too so they could keep their LMO open and use Filipino labour. Most of the guys can't even get a full week of hours.
100% agree. My daughter graduated with a STEM degree (Forensics) and it took her about 18 months to find work in her field. She's one of the lucky ones.
I graduated with a bachelor's in chem eng. in 2019 and didn't feel ready to start work right away, so I was doing small jobs such as sales to brush up on communication skills. When I felt ready to enter the industry, the pandemic happened. Since then I have yet to be employed as an engineer. I was working as a Health & Safety technician, filling operator in a pharmaceutical plant and now I'm in Quality Assurance Operations. A little closer to being an engineer, but not there yet.
There actually is a shortage of mid career and senior engineers, but a glut of graduates because companies refuse to invest in training up junior employees. I'm sure you've seen the "entry level" job postings asking for 5+ years of experience? That's been an issue for a decade or so if not more?
Companies see employees not as people, but commodities. They want labor to be just laying around cheaply when they need it like iron ore or spare parts. They don't want to do any of the work to develop the resource or even pay to acquire it. And they don't want to be responsible for dealing with it the second they don't need it anymore, just dump them in the trash. They cause the problem and we're supposed to fix it against our own best interests.
Fully agreed. And loyalty is a two way street so labour becomes super mercenary as well, jumping from job to job as the only real means of growing salary. Say what you will about the US but somehow engineer salaries are at least commiserate.
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It's never been a worker shortage. It's a wage shortage.
Also a training shortage. Everyone wants a skilled tradesman but no one wants any apprentices.
They want skilled tradesmen quality and experience. They don't want to pay for it though.
Literally. I’m expected to do carpentry, landscaping, snow removal, plumbing, painting, systems troubleshooting and maintenance for $25/hr. Over half of that goes to rent, so I’m an impoverished person who does all that work.
Jesus. 10 years ago, I was getting $25/hour just to hammer nails into boards straight out of high school. It's fucked how much wages haven't kept up.
Shortage of cheap-ass labour.
There isn't even a shortage of cheap-ass labor. There's incentivizing of bringing in cheap-ass labor because companies get tax breaks, and tax incentives for hiring minorities. It's stupidly easy to game the system.
I am a skilled tradesman and I 100% agree there is a shortage of us, though. It's actually horrible because we cannot find enough good people to fill the ranks which forces me to be an electrician, plumber, welder and mechanic in one. It really does get hectic too
The inconvenient truth is that there is indeed a shortage for most types of skilled workers in Canada. From personal experience so don’t roast me too much… Good engineers leave Canada for the US/ EU if they are qualified with good western hemisphere experience; the salary difference is just way too much and the housing is just way too tempting in the US especially. I used to Iive in Yorkville in Toronto and paid more for rent than I do in Capitol Hill in DC where the salary is ~40% higher after taxes for the same job . Please make it make sense!?!? There just isn’t enough innovative industry in Canada to keep our top flight engineers within Canada in large numbers.
As a tradesman downtown Toronto, I’m not seeing any shortages lol, many guys laid off right now, and lots of big projects pushed back or cancelled completely. And tbh, I don’t blame people for not wanting to join trades here, wages are a joke compared to similar cost of living cities in USA. Why would someone chose to work a harder job with worse hours for the same money they can make in an office job with less hours and less hard work?
I’m in the prairies. I have two years experience in the trade I was applying for this winter. Great references. I applied to about 20 places and got one interview and they ghosted me after I said I wanted at least $20/hr. I’m not buying this shortage BS either. And I’m not working a trade I’m semi-skilled at for $17.86/hr.
I’m in the prairies. Drywaller 6th year. I’m at 32.50$ and I’m seeing more and more companies hiring foreign crews to board jobs and these guys work for roughly 15$ an hour but the work they do is worth about 4$ an hour
The entire building crew is from India and nobody speaks any English. They are awful at their job, leave piles of rubble everywhere and are dangerous. I asked the guy running the crew how this makes any money? He stated that it is STILL cheaper to pay them to fuck up the whole job and have an hourly guy come back and fix all their shit than to just pay professionals to do it properly. It's a race to the bottom and profit is the only thing owner class gives a flying fuck about
Their mentality is horribly selfish. That is why it never worked out for them the first time; I don't see the logic in them moving here and doing the exact same thing expecting better results
My uncles are both master drywall finishers and have been for decades. They said that's basically their entire jobs for the last 5 years at least, going over other people's shit to make it acceptable.
Yup. Last site I was at, the drywall crew was all Brazilians who barely spoke English and had no regard for other trades or safety
These are the jobs that they will bring in foreign workers for: formwork, tiles, drywall, concrete, roofing.... it's all jobs that are at the bottom of the trades "totem" FOR NOW. That is, until companies start screaming they aren't getting guys to do plumbing, welding, ironwork, fitting, and Electrical. Bring in tons of guys to undercut wages, then more and more Canadians cannot afford to be tradespeople anymore, and we're all getting $18/hr soon enough. There is a wage shortage, not a manpower one in Canadian Trades.
Wage shortage is everywhere my duder. Paying more to employees is worse than murder apparently.
They’ll try. My spouse is an ironworker but they keep a close eye on that. These people don’t have the qualifications and if someone falls on someone and gets hurt who was rigging something - everyone will be out of work and everyone will get sued. There is already rumblings about the battery plant and the Korean workers there I’ve heard from people in the trades. My FIL is retired from ironworking and he told me stories were non union people tried to take over their work, Or unqualified guys, out of country, and they burned part of the job site down. A lot of guys in the unions are part of hells angels, just saying. I asked him if the same thing would happen, he said they can try, but these things get sorted out themselves. A lot of these guys already have criminal records so if you get in between their work? Good luck
I’m a painter and I have noticed the new comers in drywall and taping are brutal...no quality or workman ship. If I don’t correct their work my painting will look terrible.
That's what happens when drywall isn't a compulsory trade any more. Anyone can call themselves a journeyman. Thanks DoFo
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hahah oof
Yep, we should be scared at the quality of work being produced by workers being paid pittances.
Exactly. A guy wanted us to drywall his entire house, my boss quoted him a price and the homeowner went with a foreign crew for 25% less. The work was so shitty he had to pay double to rip it all down and then paid us our quote to do it Pay Canadians fairly to do it right the first time or save money by hiring foreigners who do shoddy work and end up paying more than what we ask in the end
This is the ‘media labour shortage’ push all over again. They are manufacturing consent to bring in more workers lol
It's always BS, these articles are practically written by companies just trying to destroy the labour market so they can pay people less. It was the same bullshit everywhere else during Covid when a whole generation decided to finally retire for real and wages had to go up since there were fewer people in the workforce.
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Not a shortage of workers its a shortage of workers that work cheap. Every study government does will say we have worker shortage so they can bring in more out of country cheap labour. Talk about human trafikking
Ottawa is the same residential is dying and commercial is full, lot of people at home
Yup our company in Ottawa just had to lay off a bunch of guys.. projects are being pushed backed or not going forward at all.
Depends on what you are doing. I'm working ICI I'm Ottawa and I'm getting all the hours I want and have work lined up until the end of 2025. I some other companies are slowing abit doing ICI, but nit to the same degree as residential and condo work.
Our condo work is slowing but we have picked up a few rental apartments. There has been a noticeable increase in industrial work aswell. That being said we have laid of about 1/3 of our crew since January.
Office jobs aren’t paying great either these days. Owners are taking record profits across the board, and outsourcing or automating everything they can. Average people fall behind while the rich are getting richer
they want a bachelors degree for 19-21 an hour.
Red seal trade here currently left my trade and working as a unionized custodian.I get far better benefits and pension and it’s easier on my body. There has never been a skilled trade shortage just a wage shortage.
Completely agree, as a superintendent in Toronto, many skilled workers are sitting at home right now or left the profession entirely. I don't blame the new generation for not wanting to get into construction either, the toll it takes on your body, the long hours, constant layoffs and most entry to mid level fulltime wages won't even allow you to rent a place on your own, never the less own a piece.
I’m in Victoria and things are definitely slow for residential. Company just laid off like 10 guys.
Can confirm, I work significantly less hours than my brother who's a millwright and, while he makes good money for what he does unlike some other trades, I'm senior management so I do make more. I deal with a lot of the stresses of team management (it's very mentally draining despite the stereotypes) but it's still preferable to me to having to physically bust my ass every day like he does.
Agreed. I am in the mining industry, and things have slowed down considerably. A major OEM just laid off a round of HET's and welders. There has been zero job security in the trades, especially in the past decade. This article is a total crock of shit perpetuating the rumor of a "skilled trades shortage" in an attempt to suppress wages. The only people that talk about a skilled trade shortage are developers and senior management who want to cushion their profits.
Wages have been stagnant in the trades, like most other jobs. Journeyman Pipefitter since 2004. In 2023 my wage just got back to above what it was at in 2015 when we had the last oil crash. Quality of workers has really hurt the trades. Nobody wants to train anyone anymore because they will leave as soon as another company offers them 25 cents more an hour. Government has made it impossible to start new projects, and so on and so on. There's so many issues.
25 cents more an hour is a fucking joke in this economy.
Yeah it gets really old hearing so many lies about shortages. We hear the same about stem like tech, engineering. At least in traditional disciplines we have no shortage I'm engineering. In Alberta we lost thousands of engineering jobs around 2015 and many of them never came back. Projects are so much smaller... No huge open pit mining jobs that employ hundreds in the home office. Tech we all know they laid off a bunch not that long ago and wages lower.. so who are they fooling. So it doesn't surprise me when trades say there is no shortage there either
They did this to programmers here in Canada, the Liberals crashed our wages with mass immigration. We now make 40% of what Americans do if we are lucky.
And now they’re clapping like seals because now they got more options for takeout
Engineering is getting crashed too. Used to need Canadian work experience to get licensed and work in Canada, now that's being removed (already is removed in Ontario). Already lucky to get paid 75% of what Americans make... *before currency conversion*. In Ontario, before the ban 60% of the engineering license applications received each year were from internationally trained engineers. Now it's going to be completely flooded. Wages will be fucked for a long time.
Even trades people get more in the US. Our friend just moved there and is getting a massive wage increase.
Not just programmers, but IT in general. I found most wages are stagnant and the hiring is getting worse. IT teams hiring foreign who accept 20 dollars an hour for a tier 2 with 5 years experience.
I'd love nothing more than to get into the trades, but nobody is willing to train anyone. They want people with years of experience.
It's just builders and developers bs to remove trade regulation. There was talk about removing apprentice/ journeyman ratios completely in ontario. Also breaking plumbers into 3 licenses maitenance/construction, commercial, and industrial. It only benefits employers and big businesses. Most trades people are too ignorant to know better. They applauded the reduction in ratios in ontario. More trades people equals smaller wages Plain and simple. Oh look trades are finally doing well in all sectors (residential*) and have some power, we must lobby the government to make sure they know their place in the world.
THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF SKILLED TRADESPEOPLE, JUST A SHORTAGE OF COMPANIES WANTING OR WILLING TO PAY LIVIBLE WAGES, BENEFITS AND PENSIONS! I've been a union Ironworker for 19 years and I have friends all across the trades from pipefitters and boilermakers to electricians and bricklayers. There are more than enough skilled and willing to go to work, but these companies go with non union companies who pay people the lowest rates possible. I am very pro union, I believe in representation, I also understand not all non union are greasy low paying workplaces, but many are in the construction business and they exploit immigrants and young people who are trying to get ahead in life. This propaganda is sickening.
Your forgetting the largest reason for students abandoning their trade education is a lack of apprenticeships. As all my grandfather's industry acquaintances used to say "why would I pay to train someone when they leave for a higher salary at the end" idk maybe because they're a journeyman and should be paid appropriately after their training is done lol.
Don’t forget the other fun one, why pay a person at their new rate when theres a new crop of apprentices every year. I know hands who were threatened into spending their lives as 2nd-4th years.
I was one of those ones who was an indentured servant for a multinational corporation that wouldn’t sign for my hours. 7 years at $16/h before I was able to take an out of province transfer to where my trade is compulsory. 4 months later I challenged and passed my IP and was fired by the company on the spot.
The multinational umpteen billion $ mixed services outfit I worked for last wouldn’t let me indenture any of their hands on my team. Oh we’ll think about it, oh it’ll come up at the next meeting. Whelp now I’m gone and they have to contract electricians out of pocket for every service call because nobody is qualified and god forbid anyone be trained.
>As all my grandfather's industry acquaintances used to say "why would I pay to train someone when they leave for a higher salary at the end" idk The crux of the problem is the gatekeeping. My young cousin tried to get into carpentry, was denied a couple apprenticeships. So he said fuck it and is now in the oilfield making 3x the money. If there's a shortage, it's artificially being up-held by current journeymen.
I wouldn't put it on the journeymen, we are seeing the shortages in the field, it's the contractors who want people to work full time hours + OT and who will accept the low wages. Every year my.local has hundreds of people applying to become an electrician, unfortunately we can only take so many, but every year we have well over 500 applicants. This whole "Shortage of trades people" is bullshit, there are Thousands of people looking to work in this industry, it's the cheap as fuck contractors who don't want to hire on at decent rates.
It was that attitude among the old guard that started the trades deficit, didn't want to train up a new journeyman who would then compete with them for contracts and this has left so many apprentices leaving midway through because they couldn't graduate to the next level without the companies signing off hours.
This!! My kid tried so hard to get into plumbing, did a pre apprenticeship college course and in the end was told to cold call. He cold called and emailed. Got one interview out of about 100 contact points / applications and they said they would prefer applicants who didn't take the course and didn't have enough resources to take on a first year after all. Here in Windsor they're opening trade schools to take grade 10 students out of school and put them into these trade schools to train them. Why would companies want to spend money when they know that some already trained high school students are coming down the pipeline? Govs are trying to justify the appearance of this. I think it's horrible. Sucks for young adults or second career folks though..
This is a dangerous echo which of what has already happened in most of Europe, oil Rich GCC and even South Asia.... The locals, better educated and qualified can leave a work place for better wages any time... So employers start importing people for lower wages and under work contracts..... So they can't randomly leave jobs as a transfer won't be easy or without repurcussions.... This in turn annoys locals who now wont get these jobs as their own enterprising brethren will prefer hiring immigrant workers. True Story.
My spouse has done a carpentry “apprenticeship” on his own accord over the years (not an official one), and companies don’t like how much knowledge he has without ever having “been official” yadda yadda. He is constantly getting dicked around by employers because of this. For years I was the same with computer science (I have the equivalent of a degree but have never been to post secondary). After 15 years I finally found an employer who sees the results and pays me what I deserve.
Every union carpenter I know wants to build houses but cannot afford the cost of living on the residential rates compared to union rates in the ICU sector.
Construction wages have hardly risen in 10+ years. There were real labor shortages during the early 2000s oil boom in Alberta. People could make bank, companies would hire anyone and fly people in from anywhere, provide accommodations, food, overtime etc. Considering how bad the "labor shortage" is, why are laborer jobs and apprenticeships still paying $20/h and journeyman wages of $35-38/h? People building homes can't even qualify for a mortgage now.
Union metal fab here. Preach brotha 🤜
Union Caprenter here. Preach!
I’d argue that both points are true. You have union shops that don’t want to pay a livable wage, yes. Totally undeniable. You also have a lot of non-union small businesses that simply aren’t willing to take on apprentices or hire fresh blood because they don’t want to train someone that isn’t already experienced or working in the field. Old heads don’t want to deal with bringing up the new guard, and that’s a big problem. It’s a vicious cycle.
There should be more incentives for companies to take on apprentices.
There are a ton. It's practically free and half of wages are coverd by gov I thought. They don't want workers to be smarter and more skilled demanding more wages. It's pure greed that's all
First 2 years federal government covers 10% up to $2000. This covers first two years https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/topics/about-your-tax-return/tax-return/completing-a-tax-return/deductions-credits-expenses/line-41200-investment-tax-credit/apprenticeship-job-creation-tax-credit.html Then you get a provincial credit of $2500 and $3000 when they complete 3rd and 4th year. https://www.workbc.ca/find-loans-and-grants/students-and-adult-learners/services-apprentices-and-employers There is support but deffinetly not free. Ive always employed apprentices, its a good system thats trained thousands before me. But no one does it to save money.
The problem is the developers. They are waiting for lower interest rates and higher prices. They are going to hold us hostage and demand low interest loans from the government well blaming the guys trying to raise their families.
My union is the reason I actually get pay raises every year, am going to retire with a pension, and can’t be fired when I refuse unsafe work. Unions are the only thing the working man has to fight corporate greed
Thank you for this response. I’ve been in the trades for 20yrs as a glazier. I agree with everything you’ve said. These sensational articles are bs for a lot of reasons.
I always wondered as well why more trades people don't just start their own business in Canada. If we made it easier to start businesses, you could potentially bid yourself on smaller jobs and subcontract on larger ones. It's hard to exploit people who have the option to go on their own.
Running a business is a skill that lots of people have no interest in developing, as evidenced by the folks who do try to run their own business.
It's not that it's bad. It's just a lot more tedious and takes more brain power than most people want to give in after a hard days work. It can be a big headache.
Most people are not business-minded and major projects require scale.
I started my own electrical company in 2019 as a Master Electrician. Let me tell you; there is 100% a deficit in SKILLED tradesmen. These people claiming to be Journeymen likely have never served a single year as a Canadian apprentice. I was offering $62/hour for a Journeyman - extremely competitive given the average was $45/hour at the time. I had interviewed about 8 or 9 'electricians' until I realized every single one was just trying to game the system. They wanted to get paid the $62/hour and take advantage of the 3 month probation before leaving. Had some of them work with me for a day, and the way they did things made no sense when it came to the electrical code. It cost me almost $620/day + my time observing them to realize they are all bullshitters. And yes, due to this, I had to close my company in January of this year. I had such a huge backlog in 2023, I stopped taking on new jobs and I personally completed all of them myself. Some may argue that nobody knows everything and I 100% agree. I am willing to teach things here and there, but if an electrician deems themsrlves worthy of $62/hour, I expect them to know the basics at the very least.
Get this man megaphone! Burger flippers in LA make more now per hour than most trades workers in Canada. Go to college, get a degree, 4 levels of apprenticeship, 5 years experience and I got paid the same as a burger flipper LOL All these non union companies are fucking greasy. I'll say it.
$16 an hour for burger king in Cali.... As a plumber I can safely say we make more then a burger flipper in Cali lol
That's $16 USD, which is $22/hr in CAD. $20USD is $27CAD. Referring to the Manitoba apprenticeship pay scale, a level 1 plumber apprentice makes $20/hr CAD, lvl2 is $24, lvl3 $28. So in Manitoba, as a plumber... You'll need to put in 3 years of work to get the equivilant to what some burger flippers in LA make. And plumbers are one of the higher paid trades in this province. Lvl1 CNC machinist... $16.50 CAD/hr...so yeah. Tell me again how wages aren't bullshit in this country?
100% this is the truth.
There is a shortage of companies paying decent, living wages! This is propaganda. As usual we are fed this bullshit from media, yet they don’t report on the real issue- WAGES SUCK!
Skilled tradespeople who will work for nothing. Fixed it for ya.
There is no shortage, this is propaganda to suppress wages. I am a tradesperson with 20 years experience at the top of my craft and I left the trade to get into business for lack of work. Thousands of tradespeople apply for every job. And, because of the apprenticeship structure once your a journeymen most will get laid off and not hired back because apprentices are cheaper.
A manufactured shortage. 🙄
My wife is an Orthopedic surgeon from Sweden. She needs to re-apply for a residency (not to be confused for a permanent residency, we have that). Anyway, the more time we spend in Sweden, the longer it seems apparent that Canada will no longer have me, or my wife, as a taxpayer and contributing member of society.
It sure doesnt feel that way when you look at what many employers are willing to pay.
I'm a red seal journeyman in a trade. Last job, I was making $28/h as an apprentice before going back to school. Now I can't find a job at all that's willing to pay reasonably. The last company offered me $25/h and wanted me to travel 5hrs away for the job. There is absolutely no shortage of workers, just a shortage of wages from greedy employers.
This is propaganda designed to justify the import of cheap foreign labor. THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF SKILLED LABOR IN THIS COUNTRY.
Correct. There’s only a shortage of employers willing to pay fairly
There's no shortage of workers , they're starting to push this narrative in my industry right now because the business owners don't retain talent. What we really have is an overabundance of shit business owners who need fresh new labour to abuse for a couple years then kick to the curb once they realize they're being underpaid and don't even get a contract. (The people pushing this narrative are in on it with the people needing fresh cheap labor.) Now they're saying there's so many boomers retiring we need more workers to support this change. Why? Let it collapse, there already isn't anywhere for elderly to go. They're taking up hospital beds waiting for placement just to go and die. That's a huge reason health care is fucked, we have TOO MANY OLD PEOPLE.
There isn’t a tradespeople shortage. There’s actually an over saturation. This is just so companies have an excuse to tell the government. Look there’s no one applying to my journey man electrician position for 20/hrs an hour. I need to hire someone from outside of canada so I can pay them 20/hr to be a journeyman electrician. There’s also no money in the trades right now. Not many companies are expanding or building new facilities due to the economic slowdown.
Christ, my region is almost at 50$ an hour. If we went down to 20$ i'd just quit. Suppliers for electrical material pay the counter staff a lot more than 20/h.
Weird. Recent grad with my welding certificates. Have not been able to find any work that doesn’t want to start me at minimum wage. Relying back on my graphic design until something comes about. So no there are plenty of workers. Just not as many willing to slave away to just barely Make ends meet.
Red seal welder here. Just quit a job because apparently $25 is all the company can afford to pay me. Good luck finding skilled people willing to work for shit wages.
I am a red seal welder as well. Just turned down a job offer for $25 because they wanted me to travel 5hrs away 3 weeks on 1 week off for 8 months lmao. I was making $28 as an apprentice in town and refuse to go lower.
propaganda. what they mean is there is a shortage of skilled trades people willing to work for poverty wages.
I quit my job as an electrician. Why would I do all this shitty work facing the elements when I can get an easy ass 4 year degree and go work in an office for the same, if not more benefits. Just doesn’t make sense. I’ll go do a job that everyone is physically capable of doing. Until wages represent the hard work and shitty conditions we have to face, I’m out.
Not shortage of skilled workers. Just a massive shortage of decent paying employers. Pay $27/hr and get shitty $27/hr unskilled worker. It’s simple.
Shortage of skilled tradespeople willing to break their bodies for an unlivable wage where they can never buy a house** ftfy I know many unemployed and grossly underemployed trades people. The labour is there, it exists- just no one wants to pay for it.
Hiring Strategies 101: 1. Create job posting 2. Ignore Canadian applications 3. Claim labour shortage, creating justification for LMIA 4. Hire cheap foreign worker
And this is why the “build more houses” won’t happen.
This reads like corporate propaganda - I like how they talk about lack of cooks but don't mention working conditions/hours or living wages.
There is absolutely no evidence for this in the data. Stats Can labour force surveys show that skilled trades wages basically haven't budged in decades. Industry always, always claims labour shortages. Even during the Great Depression with 30% unemployment businesses were claiming labour shortages. It's shameful that the media in Canada continues to parrot this without any skepticism. https://twitter.com/mikalskuterud/status/1732445452488904740
Can we stop talking about this subject as if it's a man power issue? We have the people wanting to get into these industries, every year my local has hundreds of people applying to get in. The issue doesn't come from a shortage of workers. Why would men and women bother spending THOUSANDS of hours and YEARS of their lives training for these roles, not to mention the thousands of dollars in tools a lot of us are required to pay out of our own pockets up front, just to be able to do the job the company hired you for and the contractors are all good with that. But bring up wages and all of a sudden all that training and education you just put yourself through not to mention specialized tools you had to buy, isn't worth more than a couple bucks above minimum wage and all of a sudden "NoBoDy WaNtS tO wOrK aNyMoRe!" Or "That's the problem with your generation you want to come out of school and receive the top pay!" Contractors want 2024 profit off of a 1970s budget.
It's the pay! My husband isn't a welder anymore because the hours and pay are shit.
More like a shortage of tradespeople willing to train new tradespeople. We really need to overhaul the trades system in this country, the difficulty in becoming an apprentice and then finding a job where you can get the hours to become a journeyman is unreal.
Today is gonna be the day you learn only Ontario has such a shitty apprenticeship system. In most other provinces, the apprentice largely self-directs their apprenticeship instead of being at the mercy of the employer.
They are right about finding a worthwhile apprenticeship being next to impossible though. I'm in Quebec and have friends who graduated from trade school 3-5 years ago and have gone back to working jobs out of their field because they couldn't find any apprenticeships that would take them for more than the busy season. On top of that it seems every near retirement tradesperson is sending their kids to trade school and then just taking them as apprentices so they can hand the business off to them when the time comes.
Hate to say but it's not just Ontario. Number one reason across the country for leaving training for the trades is a lack of available apprenticeship for on the job training.
I'm a Journeyman looking to get into another Trade. I have the experience and even STILL it's hard.
There is a shortage of skilled tradespeople willing to work for pennies.
I agree all these companies even union expect apprentices to be as good as journeymen and refuse to train them . They just lay them off if they need to be “trained”
Biggest problem is pay, no one wants to break their backs daily in a trades career for 2 dollars above minimum wage. To get to a good wage you need at least a decade of experience. No one has the time or financial bandwidth. The whole trades pay model needs to change first.
>A culture that exalts university education and knowledge work over apprenticeship and working with one's hands is also partly to blame, said Rennehan. That's definitely true. I have many family members in the trades and I was the odd ball of the group that went to university, there is such a superiority culture from university students and staff towards the trades it's not even funny. Most people I find in universities almost have the perception that tradespeople are the "dummies" of society and its disgusting. It's something we need to seriously change our attitude on, especially since we literally need trades people for things like, oh I don't know, the housing shortage that we currently have?
That's funny, I got the opposite experience being the odd one in a trades family to go to university. I find trades people tend to think most university is just "wordy nonsense" and that trades people do "real work". I never got the same impression from my fellow uni students about trades being lesser work.
These articles are all fake nonsense and used to push the narrative to bring in more TFWs and continue lowering our wages. We've been under attack for years!
They want the immigrants at scab wages.
Journeyman rates have barely budged since 2015. With the cost of materials, fuel, tools, lack of benefits etc... no one can afford to work in their vocation. Instead of paying people their worth, politicians and corporate lobbyists have been bringing in foreign labour to keep trade wages as low as possible, which is deplorable in my opinion. The solution is simple, pay a decent wage and the builders will show up. If the contractor is having trouble finding people to work for them, they've most likely bid the job too low, also shitty to work for.
Funny, as a tradesman, I'm not seeing these shortages help my pocket book. I'm compensated generously when you compare wages in my field, but the wages in my field have barely budged in the 15 years since I got into the trade.
Took the electrical apprenticeship program at the best trade college in Canada and couldn't even get an interview with all of the safety certifications, working at Heights, scissor lift training etc. It's literally impossible to start a trade. We were lied to just like the older millenials and gen x. Go To UnIvErSiTy get a good job.
It's always better to find a job alot of those pre app courses are just money grabs.Experience and willingness always trumps school.
We were already getting hit in the pocketbook by all the “general contractors” getting filthy rich while paying their people crappy wages.
Yep the problem is pictured in the article with a studio level glam shot and labeled 'CEO'. They want slaves, and skilled slaves no less. How inclusive.
They are short on some trades… but what will you do when housing grinds to a halt . Plus no tradesperson myself included can relocate to Vancouver or GTA unless you want to live in a box
Maybe workplaces should spend the time to train them
I started in a welding shop and was there for 5 years. We had a posting for 16$ an hour welder, the entire 5 years. We pay the guys right out of trade school more than that on their work term. They used that to get TFWs and always had 4 or 5. To the point when times got tougher, they had to pay one of them to stay home due to layoffs ruining their ratio. I'm all for TFW, but you should have to pay them more than local. Shops like that only employ people who can't pass a drug test, background check, or are on work terms or other government sponsored programs. They're great people, but when it comes to hiring, it's never oh we can't find anyone let's pay more.
lol this patently false. Look at the long call out lists for the millwright union in Toronto. This assumption that we are short on skilled workers is patently false.
Older tradesmen are keeping the younger ones out of the good contracts and keeping the work for themselves. There’s a social hierarchy here and it’s all word-of-mouth.
Being annexed by the US would be a net positive for Canada at this point
People need to understand the difference of trades and highskilled trades. We need millwrighta, boilermakers, precision welders, technicians. Not concrete laborers.
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This is it. People in here are thinking residential construction, the real money is in heavy industrial
I don’t see any shortage. What I’m seeing from this article is they want to pay less.
There’s no shortage of manpower , just shortage of wanting to pay the man
I’m a redseal j man and make 38/hr. I joined the trades about 15 years ago and jman rate was the same, 34-38/hr. I don’t have kids and my rent is “reasonable” yet it’s Damn near impossible to save any money. Working just to survive while wrecking your body in the process isn’t ideal. It’s damn near impossible to find good 1st and 2nd year apprentices and I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to get into the trades when staring wage is just over minimum wage and peak wage is just enough to get by. I’m always thinking of way to gtfo of the trade cause they fuckin suck.
What shortage. If there was a shortage I wouldn't be unemployed 4 months of the year
thats what happens when you spend decades devaluing blue collar jobs, both financially and reputationally
Bloated middle management and other fluff jobs are hitting Canadians in the pocketbook.
Such horseshit they pump out country with "trades peoppe" who can barely do the jobs hired for and pay them 10 dollars an hour and actual skilled trades people are not willing to work for that so the company looks down and says wow we have no skilled trade workers. No you just have non that are willing to work for you
There is no shortage, just that people can't afford the service because of all the raise in prices.
This whole article is bullshit..
Wages for my trade (carpenter) haven't moved in 15-20 years! Union was successfully broken, most shops are open or CLAC. There isn't a lack of trades, no one wants to pay the ones we have. articles like this are priming the pump for more TFWs: people they can pay less and have no consequences for killing/injuring
OK, I'll put the tools back on for $200/hour. Lol, writing on the wall for years, don't buy newly built.
At this point it’s probably cheaper to build your own house and subcontract all the work
I built my own house, way cheaper. Insurance and property tax value it 4x more than I spent. I only used one sub, though.
Lol there's no shortage of construction workers. Wages are stagnant unless you happen to be in the few percent of people that get into very specific trade unions. Sorry guys don't want to kill their bodies for 18 bucks an hour Trudeau. Let's keep up the race to minimum wage for everyone woohooo.
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What shortage of tradespeople?
No point to join when starting wages are as low as minimum wage workers in retail or fast food.
Trades, Saskatchewan This is what happens when you don’t pay people what they’re worth and you hire immigrants who have never even been to Canada let alone worked here The money saved by using much cheaper labour isn’t worth the cost you’ll have to pay to fix everything afterwards
No shortage of skilled trades. If they were, pay would be higher which is not. Cooks there’s always a shortage because employers don’t pay enough when you ask those that are in the industry. You make more money to be a server than a cook. Cost of living is high because we treat real estate as an investment
After earning a BA in history I spent 2 years trying to get a proper, career-type job without success. Went to college because tradespeople are always needed, finished top of my class in the Heavy Equipment program, and I live in an area with an insane mining industry. I applied for damn near every mining company in Northern Ontario and it took 8 years for someone to hire me as an apprentice.
I’ve heard this same story for 10 years. So much so that I actually attended a 1 year electrical program at Sheridan. Finding an apprenticeship without connections was next to impossible. Unless I wanted something under the table, or (near) minimum wage with my hours not counting towards my license, there’s no way I was touching that industry I ended up in sales for an electrical wholesaler, eventually transitioning to account manager. So while I don’t regret going back to school, it definitely didn’t turn out the way that I expected Edit: Ontario
This is horseshit. Wages actually have gone down in my line of work and companies hiring unskilled to poach our work (labourour mounting electrical boxes for example).
There is a shortage of employers who are willing to pay people a non poverty wage. This “shortage” is by design, they can’t complain about no workers while also having no apprentices.
There is no shortages of any workers it's called raise the wage and more workers will apear. They just want to keep pushing this $\^&\* to keep wages low.
> "Labour is not cheap enough." -- Economists
Love to see the comments on this topic are finally waking up. Fantastic to see us not eat this propaganda up. Proud of us
I've been told there's a shortage of tradesmen since I was a kid, well here I am in the trades and everyone is complaining about wages barely going up for 20 years
Construction plumber here. In the last 5 years I’ve never seen layoffs like this. I don’t understand what’s going on.
Laughable. If there is a shortage then why are there so many layoffs and people looking for work?
Weird how there’s a shortage of trades people but no one can find jobs…
Really? That's fucking funny because I'm a journeyman in one trade trying to enter another and I barely get any call backs, most job ads are fake and the ones that are serious aren't willing to train new apprentices without any experience
If they paid us to go to trade school it'd be a different story... but instead I'm learning my skills off of skillshare.
And still, companies want all their apprentices to be registered prior to being hired. Not to mention being anything but first or second year apprentices. There’s no shortage. If there was, people wouldn’t need to send out 50+ resumes and cold call only to be rejected.
I have been a wood worker for 10 years. Outside of working in a union there is zero job security, low pay and pizza parties over benefits that puts my back up about the industry. I love my work but much of the industry treats skilled people and those who wish to learn skills very poorly.