New Immigrants to Canada may choose Alberta as destination- Jobs Ahoy!

With every passing year the situation in Canada’s western province of Alberta has an ever present danger looming over it, that of dwindling human resources. The situation is very grim and the ‘happy hours’ of this state with a population of 3.7 million seems to be over.

At a recent business conference, one of the top executives of a leading construction firm jokingly advised the attendees to go home soon and start producing babies. The situation is not so comic for employers and business houses. They are faced with the prospects of ever rising inflation. The reason being the ever present shortage of the working class.

Additional burden With the baby boomers aging and not much addition to the population, this state of affairs nay continue yet for some time to come. The reason for this observation being that this year another chunk of retirees are going to be added to the already fragile balance of economics in the province with the baby boomers starting to hit 65 years of age, the official age of retirement in Canada.

Mike Corbett, senior vice-president of David Aplin Recruiting argues “The underlying factors never went away even when the economy tanked in 2008-09.” He further stated that they may not have access to the human capital that they had in thepast.

Shortage of strong hands In fact, Corbett had warned of a labour shortage as early as the start of the year 2010. "Although the unemployment rate is up, we haven't done anything to solve the labour-shortage problem that we experienced back in '07." He had said.

The same sentiments are echoed by the Alberta Employment and Immigration Minister Thomas Lukaszuk when he says “We are walking into a perfect storm.” It seems that Canadians are having less number of children on an average. The average stands at a mere1.6 today as compared to 2.3 in the baby boomer era.

To make matters worse, a new law states that On top of that, a new federal policy is in place that forces people, who immigrate here under Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program, to depart from the country after the term that is granted, and wait for four years more before they can reapply. Also, people from other provinces like the Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Atlantic region are staying back in their respective provinces since they have ample opportunity to find work and settle there.

Greener pastures beyond the horizon Adding insult to injury, the workers in this province are themselves taking up offers from employers in other states who offer them the lure of a better pay than what is offered back home. Major companies have also recruited Canadians at BHP Billiton, Caltex Australia, Origin Energy, Sinclair Knight Merz, Rio Tinto and Barmico when they held recruitment expos in Calgary and Edmonton in May.