Job vacancies in Calgary construction on the decline, but total remains high
via Livewire Calgary by Aryn Toombs
Construction on the Calgary Event Centre on Wednesday, January 15, 2025.
New statistics released by Statistics Canada have shown a decrease in the number of job vacancies in the construction sector in Calgary, but the overall total remains high, according to the Calgary Construction Association (CCA).
Those figures show that there has been a decrease in the number of job vacancies between July and Sept. of 2024 to 5,890, down from over 8,200 in Q3 of the previous year.
The ratio of those vacancies however remained in line with the overall decrease in job vacancies across all sectors, underscoring the critical role that construction plays in Calgary’s economy, said the CCA.
“The reality is labour stats, particularly related to the construction industry, are always somewhat volatile because they’re always based on project and activity as it changes. At a local level, when you consider large projects like the Cancer Center or the BMO and now the Event Center and then eventually Arts Commons, these large projects can take up 1,500 workers for four years,” said Bill Black, President of the CCA.
Other projects, like the Green Line, were not affecting those vacancy numbers, he said. The specialized nature of the work and the long timeline until construction could potentially begin have already been factored into hiring decisions.
Black said that the vacancy numbers going down should not be taken as an indication of a constriction of the economy—one where employers are hiring less.
“I think that the big takeaway is our construction economy, certainly as a microcosm of the overall economy, is healthy,” Black said.
“A lot of its activity is less directly connected to oil and gas type drivers than it was in the past, which means there’s potentially a bit more diversification that is healthy. That is a good thing.”
More positively, the industry hasn’t seen the same sort of boom and bust cycle as in previous years, which would have led to mass hiring in the industry and then layoffs when the economy slowed, Black said.
The steady demand for workers underlined the importance of continuing to get new workers into the trades, he added.
The Statistics Canada data showing that the proportion of construction jobs within the total job vacancies in Q3 2024 at 22 per cent, versus 27 per cent the previous year, helped to underscore that ongoing demand, said the CCA.
“It’s all proportional. I would say the big takeaway is that we’re nowhere near out of the woods in labour. We’re looking at the prospect of retirement cycles that hasn’t even really hit yet,” said Black.
Among those issues is the pending retirement of many skilled workers with decades of experience in the industry, and not enough apprentices entering into the workforce, he said.
“If you have a pool of trades of people who make up your crew, distribution in the field for all your projects, if you have a lack of apprentices, you’re having to staff your crews with more journey people. What that means is the cost of your crew is going up,” Black said.
“When a trade contractor puts together a crew pricing for a project, it’s a blended rate of a crew that that is comprised of one or two journey people, and then fourth, third, second, first year, apprentice and laborers, and you end up with a blended rate. So there that vacancy challenge, and then that then leads to concerns about, ‘well, all my journey people are pushing 55 years old. What’s my succession?’”
He said that previous boom and bust cycles had led to the systemic issues, but that a more diverse economy would help to alleviate some of those issues going forward.
“If Alberta was able to move away from a boom and bust economy to a more sort of seven to 10 per cent growth a year instead of this 40 per cent percent growth scramble shortly followed by a 40 per cent drop, that is a much easier business cycle to plan for, to budget for, to resource, because there’s there’s more stability,” Black said.