If the worker shortage hitting Quebec was a fuel shortage, we would have seen a light on the dashboard a long time ago telling us that the fuel level was very low.
Because contrary to what one might think, this shortage was “easy to predict”.
This is what Éric Desrosiers says in a short, instructive essay, soberly titled The workforce crisis.
The journalist also cites an article in which the Employers’ Council sounded the alarm about the coming shortage and a demographer predicted that it would be “very serious”. This text was published in 1993 (this is not a typo, it was indeed 30 years ago!).
The warning signs were therefore as clear as a cloudless sky.
Firstly: the demographic shock. The marked decline in the birth rate, which fell to 1.5 children per woman at the turn of the 1980s, would have a dramatic effect.
A problem to which is added the aging of the population. The decrease in the relative weight of Quebecers of working age “since the beginning of the 2000s” is significant.
The COVID-19 pandemic is therefore not the source of the shortage. But it “did nothing to fix things” as employees in the hardest-hit sectors, such as restaurants and retail, migrated to better-paid jobs.
Add to these causes the fact that Quebec’s economy is very vigorous, but also that many companies simply cannot find enough workers with the skills they are looking for.
Éric Desrosiers, who covers the economy at Duty for over 20 years, has taken us by the hand to explain all that to us. So much so that if I had been his publisher, I would have titled this book: Shortage 101.
And I too would have rushed to publish it.
This is a crucial subject. Understanding the implications is fundamental.
Because the shortage will have major repercussions in Quebec over the coming decades. It is already slowing down economic growth. Warning: If nothing is done, the province’s public finances will suffer.
PHOTO RYAN REMIORZ, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
According to Hydro-Québec CEO Michael Sabia, “the availability of labor” could compromise his ambitious action plan to decarbonize Quebec.
The impacts are already multiplying. One of the most recent: Hydro-Québec CEO Michael Sabia said that “the availability of labor” could compromise his ambitious action plan to decarbonize Quebec.
This is a serious time, therefore. And after listing the causes and consequences of the shortage, Éric Desrosiers convinces us that solutions must be found. He devotes almost two thirds of his essay to searching for the right remedies.
There are no quick and easy ones. Rather, it lists a string of measures that fall under both the government and private companies.
Including initiatives to try to increase the number of available workers and others to boost productivity.
The only downside is that for my part I would have liked it to explore more the potential impact of developments in artificial intelligence on the job market (and therefore on the labor crisis). Perhaps he could make it the subject of his next essay?
Extract
“The parallel may seem strange to some, but it seems to me that there is something in the way we have, in Quebec, of being interested in the problem of labor shortage This is reminiscent of another, completely different issue: that of global warming. In both cases, we are talking about phenomena with major consequences, predicted for decades by experts, and easy to see coming for anyone who deigns to pay attention. And yet, we only began to be truly interested in them when their effects began to become more concrete and biting. »
Who is Éric Desrosiers?
After studying political science at the bachelor’s level (Université Laval) and at the master’s level (McGill), Éric Desrosiers completed a doctorate on “Canadian democracy in the era of globalization” at the University of Montreal. He is a journalist at Duty since 1988 and has covered the economy for the Montreal daily for over 20 years. He received the Prize for Excellence in Quebec Economic and Financial Journalism in 2016.
The workforce crisis – A Quebec lacking workers
All in all/The duty
160 pages