By Cheryl Jahn

Employment Picture Concerning

Sep 13, 2018 | 2:29 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The latest Employment Outlook report for BC shows 903,000 new jobs will need to be filled over the next decade, 615,000 of which are due to retirement. The looming labour shortage comes as no surprise to Melissa Barcellos, the City Manager of Economic Development. It also reflects what she is hearing locally and the report should serve as a wake-up call.

“Any future growth in Prince George will depend on attracting people to the city,” she says. “To me, that’s huge. It tells me that local employers need to prioritize workforce development, retention and, especially, attraction into their business planning efforts to ensure they can keep up with demand.”

Not surprisingly, the report sets out health care as the fastest growing industry. In fact, in BC, there will be 68,000 new positions to fill in the next decade and another 80 positions to fill due to retirement. 

And Northern Health is well aware of it.

“This has been happening over the last several years and what we’re seeing is going to be even greater into the future,” says Sandra Rossi, Regional Director of Recruitment and Retention for Northern Health. “We’re going to need to take a multiple disciplinary to our recruitment and retention. We think that retention is an area where have the most leverage.”

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She says they have been very creative in their search for employees with things like working with post-secondary institutions to help craft curricula, getting into high schools, etc.