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From soaring real estate pricesto urban highways gorged with vehicles, it’s clear that Canada is outgrowing its infrastructure faster than we can update it. Forty-one million people now call Canada home, and the population is increasing at its fastest rate in 65 years.
For anyone planning their next chapter, whether that’s a high school student choosing a post-grad path or a person looking for a new career, the need for infrastructure presents an opportunity to land a well-paying job and play a role in building the country for the next generation.
In demand
In an effort to stabilize the housing market and curb homelessness, the federal government announced a plan this past spring to build 3.87 million homes by 2031, requiring the annual construction of more than double the number of new homes currently being built each year. It also plans to build new highways, hospitals and transit systems. To achieve this bold goal, Canada desperately needs a new wave of workers into the skilled trades: people with certified, hands-on skills like carpentry, welding, plumbing or any of the other of the 300 professions the federal government has designated as a skilled trade.
It’s not just the push to build infrastructure that’s creating jobs: many workers are also aging out of the profession. Approximately 20 per cent of construction workers plan to retire over the next 10 years and that could translate to a shortage of 60,000 workers by 2032, according to BuildForce Canada, a market research firm that serves the construction industry. Meanwhile, job vacancies for certified tradespeople almost doubled between the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2023.
To Shaun Thorson, CEO of Skills/Compétences Canada, a non-profit that promotes careers in the trades and technologies, those numbers are alarming and indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of the salaries and stability that a career in the trades can offer. Many jobs pay well: according to current figures available from Statistics Canada,...