“Council recently released a report projecting a shortage of between 40-thousand and 120-thousand workers in the forest sector alone in BC”

Wow!!!

Here is what BC says about the forestry sector.

“The number of jobs in forestry & logging is declining. In 2008, there were 17,400 people working in this industry, only two-thirds the level (26,300) in 1990. The industry’s GDP was 13% lower than in 1990.”

“Workers in forestry & logging are more likely to be unemployed than are other BC workers. Between 1990 and 2008, unemployment rates in this industry averaged 13.5%, considerably higher than the 7.8% rate for all industries.”
http://guidetobceconomy.org/major_industries/foresty.htm

So how do we get from a total workforce of about 20,000, let us say to a shortage of 40,000 to 120,000 by the year 2025 according to the Forest Products Sector Council?

Well, it is not the same definition used for the “forest sector”, for one. The BC statistics do not include the manufacturing sector. However, that sector alone will not bring the total numbers anywhere near the 120,000 workers claimed as a maximum possible by the FPSC.

Here is their report:
http://www.fpsc-cspf.ca/sectorstudy/employment-projections-bc
Here are the figures as extrapolated from the graphs. The numbers below areas follows: 2009 employment for BC; projected optimistic employment for 2025; projected attrition by 2025; demand for new workers by 2025.

forestry and logging8,00010,5005,5005,000
sawmills etc.17,00027,00010,20016,800
engineered wood products2,8005,0002,0003,000
pulp, etc.9,5009,5006,2003,300
support activities5,6008,0003,8004,200

total42,90060,00027,70032,300

From the information shown by the source organization, the maximum new workers that may be required based on the most optimistic economic projections, including new product development and likely not accounting from the projected downturn in feedstock availability due to the MPB effects by 2025 is just over 30,000.

So where does this figure of 40,000 to 120,000 come from? BTW, I would not call it a shortage. It is a projected demand. While they looked at the attrition, they did not look at the projected workforce coming on stream plus the capacity the current workforce development infrastructure has to develop new workers to fill the projected gap. Only after that can we determine a projected shortage.

Good thing some people question some of these stories, I thought we might have to build one or two new citys

Misprint, maybe?

Trades people don’t pop out of the ground. First they must be apprentices. Everyone is predicting the shortage but no one is indenturing apprentices. Even if they were, there isn’t any money from governent to put on new classes. Forget the school at the Rustad site, start using what we have. In the end they will get the skilled people from the US or Overseas.

The way I look at it, it is a classic sequence of pieces of information that have come together with the end result being a claim that is totally unreasonable. To the lay person, all the above figures are totally meaningless. To those who have something to do with forestry, especially forest industry planning, they would typically know there is something wrong with the figure presented in the article.

Locally, the figure is being passed on by Resources North in this document
http://www.resourcesnorth.org/downloads/RNA%20Recruitment%20handout%202012.pdf

It says: “Most employment sectors in Canada report that there will not be enough workers to fulfill society’s needs for goods and services. The Forest Products Sector Council recently released a report projecting a shortage of 40,000 -120,000 workers in the forest sector alone.”

The figure obviously, to those who know the order of magnitude of how many are in the forest sector in BC, is far too large.

This is a promotion of a workshop to deal with the issue on a northern BC level. It states in the “flyer” that “A diverse group of stakeholders are (sic) involved in the steering committee including academic institutions, non profits, professional associations, and industry.”

The least I would expect of that steering committee is to have done some preparation and be able to provide us with some local projections based on the work done by the FPSC. In addition, if those projections did not take into account the fact that by 2025 the projected falldown due to the MPB will be in the 40% range, then they cold have adjusted the workforce demand accordingly.

I think it is only fair for the “workshop” to have some better local projections since this is a northern workshop, not a BC workshop and not a Canada-wide workshop.

All the FPSC provides on its site is a projection for BC. It projects a demand for 10,000 to 30,000 workers by 2020 (I was in error with the 2025 I used in my previous post). That is based on their most pessimistic economic outlook to their most optimistic. That is a spread of 300% in the projections.

When I look at the national and regional figures, it appears that they have not made adjustments for regional differences. The percentage changes appear, at least when looking at the graphs, to be applied equally across Canada.

In my opinion, in order to have an effective workshop those who will participate will require some realistic figures based on local conditions. It is premature to go into such an event without having a good idea of the magnitude of the problem.

NoWay wrote: “Trades people don’t pop out of the ground”

I think many people realize that. However, trades people, professionals, drivers, etc., as well as labourers (they are not all highly skilled people) have been coming on stream in the past.

The real questions then are:

1. how many trades people have been provided historically into the forestry sector

2. what is the infrastructure in place and what capacity does it have per year to bring new people on board

3. what is the projected rate of people entering the total workforce over the next 10+ years

4. what is the projected percentage of those who would be interested in entering the forest sector workforce?

5. how many of those have to be trained for 2 weeks from the lowest skilled to 5+ years at the highest skilled.

With those and some other questions being answered, both for optimistic, mid range, and pessimistic forest sector economic outlooks on a region by region basis, we can begin to determine the magnitude of the problem and have some meaningful discussions at a workshop as to how to solve it.

Without that, we have a lot of wheel spinning going on and a bunch of chicken little scenarios wasting time which could be used much more productively.

Besides, what have all those millions of dollars that have gone to OBAC and CCBAC done for us? I thought they would have all such figures at their fingertips by now. Remember those are the folks that were looking into forest sector worker displacement as a result of the MPB.