Help Wanted: Edmonton

Below are some excerpts from an interesting article in the Edmonton Journal about the job market, and how it affects small business owners and the public. "Alberta is enjoying the strongest period of economic growth ever recorded by any Canadian province."  Are we really enjoying it? "Projections indicate that despite an increasing effort to recruitskilled and unskilled labour from every imaginable source and locationaround the globe, Alberta will be short more than 100,000 worker in adecade or so." It’s a very good article but quite a long read so I’ve just left the interesting tidbits:

Help! We need some bodies
Challenges facing many small-business owners are often formidable
Tom Barrett, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Wednesday, October 18, 2006

EDMONTON – Lloyd Steier was driving out of Edmonton recently when he pulled out of the line of heavy morning traffic to gas up his car.

The professor of strategic management and organization at the University of Alberta School of Business was puzzled by the lack of activity at the service station on the busy Calgary Trail.

"It was 8:30 a.m. and there was no one around," he said. "Then I saw a sign saying it was closed due to labour shortages and would only be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

"We always talk about the importance of location, but this garage is located on one of the busiest roads in Alberta and it isn’t even open during morning rush hour."

Steier says the owner is likely offering a very generous wage, but still can’t find people willing to take or stick with the job, an increasingly common development in Alberta.

FORMIDABLE CHALLENGES

By now everyone in the country is aware that Alberta is awash in multi-billion dollar oil projects and upgrader developments.

Many people have more money to spend and the business opportunities created by the boom are simply remarkable. Statistics Canada figures show Alberta leads the country by a wide margin in the number of small businesses started in recent years.

The challenges many of the province’s small-business owners are facing are also very formidable, however, especially those that are not directly plugged into the boom. Expenses are way up with rising energy prices, soaring real estate values and higher wages, and finding and keeping employees is the biggest issue, Steier says.

"Human resources has supplanted financing as the number one concern for starting a business here," he says. "The biggest question now is, Can you staff it?"

HELP WANTED

Those shortages are already becoming evident across the province, and its not just the "Help Wanted" signs posted at many businesses that demonstrate that. The impact is clear in Edmonton.

A number of restaurants have started closing on Sundays or eliminating breakfast or lunch because they can’t find enough employees.

"We’re a service-based industry hiring entry-level people and there’s a huge demand for their services in other industries as well," says Peter Jackson of Edmonton’s Jack’s Grill, which recently ended a 10-year run of being open on Sundays.

"It’s a strange economy. My labour costs have risen 25 per cent, my overall costs are up 15 per cent. All the trades charge more just to show up. Gas has gone up. My landlord wants a 55-per-cent increase. Power costs have doubled in the past few years. But we can’t double our prices."

Companies such as Wal-Mart and Tim Hortons are offering their staff gift certificates and scholarships. Others advertise signing bonuses, generous shift differentials, even bonuses for showing up every day or staying for six months or a year.

Jackson von der Ohe, chairman of the board of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, said he asked the human resources head of one of his two companies how he was doing so well at recruiting skilled trades people.

"He looked at me with a little grin and said ‘It started the day I realized they were interviewing me, I wasn’t interviewing them’ "

Back in February, von der Ohe and some of his Chamber colleagues toured the ultimate boom town, Fort McMurray, for a glimpse of the challenges they expect to face.

One of their team waited through an intimidating lineup in a phenomenally busy but understaffed fast food restaurant, only to see the man in front of him offer his server a $24-an-hour job, starting the next day.

"The kid quit on the spot and walked out," he says.