Now Hiring! The Talent Crunch Hits Home
Aggregate operators need to think outside the box to attract and retain workers.
By Matthew Bradford
The war for skilled labour is on, and few sectors are left unscathed. That includes employers in the aggregate sector who are competing against their construction industry peers for qualified workers who can keep operations moving and who will stay for the long haul.
The latest statistics aren’t promising. At the last tally, Statistics Canada indicated that the construction industry’s vacancy rate sits at 5.8 per cent (58,300 jobs), while BuildForce Canada estimates the construction sector will have a deficit of 277,000 workers within the next decade.
“We’re looking at thousands of workers disappearing from the market over the next few years, so the labour shortage isn’t going to fix itself,” predicts Greg Sweetnam, vice president with James Dick Construction. “In fact, it’s probably going to get worse.”
What’s to blame for the industry’s labour woes? Take your pick. A massive uptick in retirement, demographic trends, and aggregate industry misconceptions are all influencing the sector’s ability to find, and more importantly keep, skilled talent on their teams. These factors were in play long before COVID-19 arrived on the scene, but the pandemic has done much to exacerbate an existing problem.
“We’ve been struggling with this talent shortage for years, but the pandemic has just escalated it to the point where we’ve now got a serious problem,” says Dwayne McKenzie, director of sales at Nelson Aggregate.
No matter the reasons behind the talent crunch, its impact in the field is hard to ignore. Having fewer people working at Ontario’s pits and quarries is having a cascading effect over all operations. For example, says McKenzie, “Everybody is behind in their production, which leads some to outsource some of that production. What’s happening now, though, is that the people you reach out to for outsourcing also don’t have enough people to cover their crews.”
Meeting industry demand is a challenge under normal circumstances, but it is now increasingly difficult because there are fewer people to do the job. “There’s not enough crushing capacity to produce the products we need as fast as we can sell [our aggregates],” explains McKenzie. ”So we need [the pits and quarries] running every day of the week all year round. Except we can’t get the labour to do that.”
If there were guaranteed solutions to the construction labour crunch, articles like this would be few and far between. As it stands, finding skilled and willing talent to work Ontario’s pits and quarries is a challenge that is becoming more difficult by the day. The upside is that the aggregate industry has proven its ability to adapt to changing conditions and can do so again.
“We have to think differently than we ever have and stop thinking that we’re driving the bus because we’re not,” says Sweetnam. “It’s the labour pool that’s driving the bus, [at least] until immigration and new workers come on stream. In the meantime, we have to find ways of getting on board.”
Originally published in the Winter 2022 issue of Avenues Magazine.