PRESS RELEASE: Canada’s mining industry is beginning to show signs of economic recovery. Along with its resurgence comes a problematic thin labour supply that has the potential to derail projects, drive up the cost of finding workers and ultimately undermine an operation’s ability to run competitively unless corrective collaborative actions are taken to manage the future availability of workers.

MiHR’s Canadian Mining Labour Market Outlook 2017 anticipates critical gaps for numerous mining-related occupations, as well as an increased replacement rate due to retirement - accounting for about 47% of the hiring requirements. The incoming generations of new entrants are vitally important to the health of mining’s future labour supply, especially prospective students. 

In particular, professional and physical science occupations and technical occupations are estimated to have among the largest of occupational gaps.

According to MiHR’s forecasts, the industry’s hiring requirement in these occupations is projected to be roughly 18,210 from 2018 to 2027; yet, mining is only expected to secure about 8,670 new entrants over the same time, representing a gap of about 9,540 people, or about 52% of all vacancies that are projected to remain unfilled.

MiHR’s key programmes continue to focus on improving the labour supply for the mining industry, which includes strategic efforts to retain the knowledge base of the existing labour force, increase knowledge transfer from one generation to the next, facilitate collaboration between educators and employers, strengthen the labour supply’s attachment to the mining industry, and develop a robust pipeline of workers that is suited to withstand shifts in economic cycles and employer needs.

Read the Canadian Mining Labour Market Outlook 2017  here.