Despite being a red-hot sector of the economy that employs the best technology and offers an endless stream of jobs, the mining industry still can't find enough people to staff them. The crippling labour shortage remains the industry's biggest challenge. Nothing else comes close.
The labour shortage is making it very difficult for companies to hold onto employees. But the problem will get much worse. The Ottawa-based Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MIHR) predicts we will need 92,000 people in the next 10 years to meet projected demand. And the demand is greatest in the most highly skilled positions: engineers, technicians and specialized tradespeople.
Even that number comes nowhere close to defining how severe the shortage is, because about 40% of the work force will retire in the next decade.
Some of the pay packages have become famous in their own right. At HudBay Minerals Inc., a Winnipeg-based copper and zinc producer, every employee received a cheque last April worth more than $33,000 as part of a profit-sharing plan. In Sudbury, CVRD Inco pays out a nickel price bonus that has topped $20 an hour.
The students entering the industry are reaping the benefits as well. At the University of Toronto school, the employers start showing up to woo students almost as soon as class begins in September. Everyone gets a job that pays around $70,000 to $75,000 (plus bonuses), and most people get at least four or five offers. This simply does not happen in other disciplines.
"We all had job offers before Christmas," says Chelsea Hamilton, 22, a female engineer who graduated this year and is with Barrick. "People kept getting them right up until we graduated. They're all competing with each other to get us before everyone else does."
How do you sell the mining industry to [city dwellers]? Francis McGuire, the chief executive of Major Drilling Group International Inc., sees it all first-hand. His company, which outsources drilling crews to mine sites across the country, has experienced turnover of 70% at the entry level as people quickly realize the outdoors life is not for them.
These days, he warns Canadian clients that they had better offer satellite TV, satellite Internet, flexible work hours, and laundry and cleaning service if they want his drillers to show up. Even though Major Drilling's hourly wages have jumped from around $18 an hour to $30 an hour in two years, it is still not enough to entice people.
"These are jobs where people have to like to be out there with the bugs, the mosquitos, the cold, the wet weather," he says with frustration. "It's not something the average urban dweller even understands. They spend a week there and they're gone."
Facebook
Twitter