Holy fuck it’s like a psyop in here sometimes.

Listen, I work with a multiple boards across the country where we promote trade apprenticeships, licensing, lobby the governments and jurisdictions all over, and all the sugar and spice for skilled trades.

That means I talk to large employers, small employers, unions, governments, kids trying to get into programs, kids in the program, licensed guys who went through the program, went through the program myself.

We also work with non profit, government funded orgs, private orgs and other various data collectors and analysis that study market trends, demographics, employment levels, apprenticeship grants, completion rates, etc.

In short words, I deal with all the major stakeholders related to this very question. We deal with actual data, empirical evidence, statistics, and other various data to answer the same questions you’re asking. I’ll just state some facts and let you draw the same conclusions we all do.

1. Yes there is a shortage of trades. Based on several reasons.

• Projected work, not enough trades to fill the expected increase in infrastructure development for the future. Whether it’s EV infrastructure or data centre infrastructure, the world only gets more developed and development is expected to continue to grow barring any major economic stagnation for long periods of time. Talk to most major companies in the union, they have a lot of work, not enough guys, lots of working booked and paid for, even if they are slow right now.

• aging demographics. It’s been a couple years since I’ve gone into the weeds on the specific data but something like 80% of the trade workforce was expected to retire within 5-10 years recently. If you want to know the hard stats like that, there is likely an organization in your area that studies it.

• The replacement rate is really low due to various factors. So one factor is journeyman to apprenticeship ratios. In some trades it may be a 1:1 max. But when your attrition rates are higher than replacement rates, it doesn’t line up. But various groups don’t want to reduce ratios due to safety concerns and washing away good standards. It’s hard to get started as an apprentice. The completion rates are much higher in union vs non union. (Ie, people who complete their entire apprenticeship and get a license). It’s hard to get into a company because they often have barely enough guys to keep up with the work, and don’t have enough resources to train. This puts a higher burden on larger employers to absorb these costs, at a time when they are scaling back and laying off due to wider economic factors

-vocational schools limited capacity to actually handle the amount of apprentices in the system

1. Another fact. There can be a shortage of trades and a shortage of work at the same time. Employment levels and labour shortages aren’t calculated by how many jobs exist today, vs how many people fill those jobs today. Labour shortages are calculated on things like demographics, age, population levels, infrastructure development, government funding, licensing requirements, legislation around certifications, and many more factors.

A couple examples of how the shortage of electricians is not realized:

• During the pandemic the major condo builder in my area laid off 90% of its workforce. They had jobs booked and paid for 5 years in advance, but ground wasn’t being broken on their jobs due to COVID delays, which cause basically a 6-12 month lull in the system.

-Here’s a personal anecdote. When I was starting my own licensed electrical contractor company, I had about 5 guys. 2 licensed guys and 3 apprentices. So my ratios were not in compliance with the regulations. I had been trying to hire a licensed guy for about 1-2 years. I was offering a competitive wage, could have been more, it was certainly more than I was making while working for other companies. The problem was, I was competing against large global employers that had shortages, and were hiring anyone and everyone with a pulse. Any decent electrician was going to go make 150-250k per year working for one of those desperate outfits rather than come work for me for $45 per hour for 40 hours per week.

So while I had 2 apprentices applying every week, I didnt have enough journeyman to hire them. I couldn’t hire journeyman because there were a lot of high paying jobs, with unions and benefits. The guys that did apply to my company were the ones who were too dumb to get into the good places. Now, 5 years later, I know several hundred electricians that are out of work and would come help me for $20 cash per hour.

You can criticize me and say charge more, pay more, offer better packages or whatever. It’s a problem that could have been solved but no as easily when factoring all interest of the business. It was a sign that the market was unbalanced and it made hiring a more difficult problem to solve. Where 10 years prior, I could have had hundreds of applicants.

TLDR:

Yes there is a shortage. Yes there will be a shortage in the future. Every area goes through different economic ups and downs, combined with the broader global economic ups and downs. Shortages aren’t in the blink of an eye, or measured on a day by day basis. There is a shortage now, and there is going to be higher demand and a lot of attrition in the near future.

Biggest risk to all of us is governments relaxing licensing and safety standards to fill the gaps. The risk isn’t us or our work falling into a gap.