While B.C.’s looming skills shortage has raised pressure for increased foreign recruiting to fill jobs, a major Vancouver technology employer says a homegrown approach could help ease the gap.
According to the British Columbia 2025 Labour Market Outlook, B.C. will have 934,000 new job openings over the next decade. The provincial government estimates 27% of those will have to be filled by new immigrants. John Graham, the president of business software company SAP Canada, which is B.C.'s sixth-largest employer, doesn’t totally agree with the assessment that looking outside is the only option.
“In my tenure here in Canada in the last seven months, do I feel that we need to be hiring from all over and other parts of the globe to be able to fulfill the shortage here? I don’t see it that way,” said Graham, himself a recent transplant from Minneapolis. “I was the COO for SAP America for a number of years and I wouldn’t say we were having to hire an inordinate amount of people from outside the United States, and having to bring people in to fill positions.”
By 2025, through new entrants, interprovincial migration, immigration and increased labour force participation, the province estimates B.C. will be able to fill 929,000 of those jobs, which leaves a measurable gap of 5,000 unfilled position. In the report’s release, Shirley Bond, minister of Jobs, Tourism, and Skills Training and Labour, said someone is going to have to pick up the slack to fill the remaining positions.
“We need to have a clear appreciation for the implications of our aging workforce,” Bond said. “Economic growth will generate thousands of job openings but replacement of retiring workers will generate over two-thirds of job openings over the next ten years.”
Graham said almost all of SAP’s Canadian workforce, which includes 1,223 at its Vancouver office on Mainland St. in Yaletown, were born and raised in Canada. He also noted all of the roughly 350 interns are from Canada as well. He said the key is making sure the next generation is engaged in the “digital transformation” of the workforce.
“I do think there’s a healthy workforce here that would like to be employed,” he said. “We just added 150 new people to the payroll in the last 50 days.”
