According to a leading industry organisation, Canada will require in excess of 250,000 new construction workers between now and the year 2021.
BuildForce Canada, a Canadian construction organisation, recently released this statistic in Construction Looking Forward. The paper is a summary of the industry’s projected growth and needs over the next eight years.
Although the same organization last year projected that 319,000 workers would be needed, this figure has now been downsized. However, the Canadian Construction Association has stated that this does not mean the industry’s needs are any less serious. The construction industry is booming thanks to a demand for natural resources as well as increased requirements from the country’s population as a whole. As Canadians retire in larger and larger numbers, the quest to find qualified candidates to replace workers in important sectors has become increasingly difficult. This issue has the potential to lead to construction delays which, in turn, could negatively impact on a number of important economic sectors.
‘If you have one or two or three major projects slightly delayed […] that can have a big impact’, said the association’s president. ‘We’re filling that need either domestically or through measures like the Temporary Foreign Worker Programme.’
