Treds, Opportunities and Priorities Report 2008

The 2008 Trends, Opportunities and Priorities Report (TOP) is now available. You can click on the line above or request a hard copy from the office. The report is 20 pages and has the references, participants, consultation document and survey included as appendices. The TOP Report is a community-driven strategic 1-2 year action plan of coordinated local, targeted activities to help address local labour market trends, opportunities and priorities.
As part of the TOP consultation process we are asking you to fill out a short survey.  The survey will take no more than 5 minutes to complete. Please fill out the survey no later than February 10, 2008, so that we can use your feedback to improve next year's consultations. You can fill out the survey online or by printing the survey and faxing it back to 416 934-1654. On-line:  go to http://www.localboardsnetwork.com/survey.php?QPE956DS for survey and instructions.

Labour Market News

Labour Force Survey

The Daily
Statistics Canada
January 11, 2007

Following seven consecutive months of increases, employment edged down in December (-19,000). The unemployment rate remained steady at 5.9% in December. Manufacturing experienced another drop in December (-33,000). Employment in this industry was further reduced by an estimated 6.2% in 2007. All of the employment losses in December were among employees in the private sector. Gains for the year were mostly in the public sector and self-employment. Wages continued to rise in December, increasing to 4.9% from December 2006, exceeding the most recent increase in the Consumer Price Index of 2.5%.

Office Cleaners Fighting For Pay Rights

Toronto Star
Rita Daly
January 28, 2008

Office cleaners, predominantly visible minorities from Central and South America, are among the most invisible of low-paid workers. Primarily women, they often work alone, and through the night.
But the office cleaners are front and centre in a campaign for better wages and working conditions that pits a big North American union against the Toronto cleaning industry's last big holdout. The Service Employees International Union is leading the unionization drive, known across North America as "Justice for Janitors." In Toronto, the movement began with the union quietly trying to convince the city's four major cleaning companies to agree to a city-wide standard that would stop the decline of cleaners' wages as they bid for competing contracts.

The Beacon Group Tackles Nationwide Labour Shortage

With an ongoing economic boom across Canada, labour shortage is becoming a leading issue for human resource professionals. The Beacon Group is engaging HR departments to begin planning for future recruiting and retention challenges by launching the Applicant Management System (AMS). Applicant Management System is a web-based recruiting, validation and selection process which allows clients to create a bank of potential employee candidates using a quantifiable, deliberate and objective recruiting process. This allows clients to secure a better quality of candidate as well as reduce costly turnover.

Industry Feels Pinch As Numbers Of IT Grads Plummet

Globe and Mail
Elizabeth Church and Matt Hartley
January 21, 2008

Calling all computer geeks. Your country's economy needs you.

Computer science graduates are becoming increasingly rare. Since the end of the high-tech boom, enrolment at Canada's computer science faculties has tumbled as students and their parents soured on an industry that lost investors billions and shed so many jobs. As a result, employers are scrambling to recruit and to get attention for a situation that has all the makings of a major skills shortage in Canada and across North America. They plan to ramp up those efforts today with the release of a Conference Board study commissioned by a coalition of Canadian employers that highlights the need for more IT professionals and projects as many as 58,000 new jobs in the industry in the next year.

Immigrants

IT Jobs Coalition To Lobby For Immigration Changes

ComputerWorld Canada
Shane Schick
22 January, 2008

Every IT manager position that goes unfilled costs the Canadian economy more than $160,000 a year, according to a report released Monday which Bell and other firms will use to lobby for changes to foreign immigration policies. The report, published by the Conference Board of Canada, calculated the economic impact of skill shortages in 15 technology-related positions, using wages, profits per employee and other indirect effects. The latter is based on how IT professionals spend their money, such as money that gets pumped back into the economy, taxes and savings that affect interest rates.The monetary fallout of most vacant IT jobs hovered around the $100,000 mark, including software engineers at more than $150,000 and network operations staff at $106,000.

Youth

Bored By School, Boys Turn Violent

Toronto Star
Jim Coyle
January 19, 2008

Clyde Chamberlain, a Toronto native and a high-school teacher, is increasingly worried by escalating youth violence and in the ways the education system is letting kids down. When he went to high school, Chamberlain took a five-year science, technology and trades program. Since then, the province has dismantled most of the tech-school programs in the province. He says. "Most shops lie dormant or have been changed to classrooms". Increasingly, the education system is geared to academics. Parents push many children to university "where they don't belong." Meanwhile, trade programs are less available, even though they feed co-op and apprenticeship programs and Ontario has a shortage of skilled workers.

Women

Women Losing Ground In Getting Top Jobs In Executive Suites

Globe and Mail
Wallace Immen
January 16, 2008

The number of women in top executive positions has fallen in Canada over the past year, a study finds. Just 31 women hold the highest-paid executive jobs in the 100 largest publicly traded companies. That's down from 37 last year, according to the study "The Glass Ceiling" by executive search firm Rosenzweig & Co. Among the 535 most senior and highest paid positions at these companies, just 5.8 per cent are held by women. Last year, they held 6.9 per cent. As well, only a quarter - 26 per cent - of the companies have at least one woman in an executive officer's position, down from 30 per cent last year. This drop is disheartening and it indicates that Canada's corporate structure is still inherently unfriendly toward promoting women," says the managing partner at Toronto-based Rosenzweig.

Education

Province Contributes $7 million To George Brown College For Expansion Of Centre For Hospitality And Culinary Arts

George Brown College
News Release
January 25, 2008

$7 million in funding from Ontario's Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities will allow George Brown College to rrenew and expand its facilities and programs to meet the increasing demands of the country's Hospitality industry. Employing more than 1.7 million people nationwide, the industry currently faces a significant labour shortage, requiring another 300,000 professionals by 2015. The proposed George Brown expansion will add an additional 1,000 students a year, providing the industry with 3,000 new workers a year over the next five years.

Applications Increasing To Ontario Colleges

Colleges Ontario
News Release
January 24, 2008

First-year enrolment at Ontario's 24 colleges is expected to increase in 2008, according to preliminary figures released today by Colleges Ontario. "Postsecondary education is becoming a necessity for people who want to succeed in today's economy," said the president and CEO of Colleges Ontario. "The increase in applications confirms that greater numbers of people recognize the importance of college education and training." In 2007, first-year enrolment to colleges increased by six per cent over the previous year. Almost 60 per cent of first-year postsecondary students in Ontario attend college, compared with just over 40 per cent who enter university. The coming wave of retiring baby boomers and slowing population growth means Ontario faces a skills shortage of more than 360,000 people by 2025. College graduates will play an essential part in addressing this challenge.

Other News

Value Employees As Much As The Bottom Line

Canwest News Service 
Susan Hickman
January 23, 2008

Employers across Canada must adapt to a generational shift that is transforming the labour market, warns a leading workplace researcher. And companies that don't "get it" will be replaced by new ones that respect the changing wants and attitudes of young employees, says a professor of Carleton University's Sprott School of Business. Young newcomers to the workforce don't put their priority on money or "getting ahead". They want exciting work, free training and, most importantly, lives outside of their jobs. If they're not happy with their work, they'll quit. Ms. Duxbury said employers need to understand the influences of their employees based on the period in which they were born. Business success during the next several decades will depend on how employers deal with workloads, reward and recognition, performance management, recruiting and keeping talent, and developing supportive managers.

VOLUME 1
January, 2008

Project May Help  Low-Income Groups Save For Education

Social Research and Demonstration Corporation
January 25, 2008

Can low-income people be encouraged to save money in order to increase their human capital, and in turn, their long-run standard of living? This question is at the heart of learn$ave, a demonstration project that allows individuals to realize a 300 per cent rate of return on new savings. The goal of the project is to help low-income people invest in themselves, in so doing, they increase their own economic security as well as their children’s.The Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) has released a new report titled Learning to Save, Saving to Learn: Early Impacts of the learn$ave Individual Development Accounts Project.
This report is the 18-month results of the demonstration project. Participants receive $3 in matched saving credit for every dollar deposited in a special account. These credits are to be used for education or training, or for starting up a small business.

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