Original Article, FOCAL Initiative, August 5, 2021
The Canadian labour force is aging. This includes thousands of employees within the Canadian automotive industry who will soon retire.
The loss of accumulated skills and knowledge associated with these retirements is precipitating an employment deficit. In turn, this creates an exciting range of opportunities in the automotive industry for youth (defined as the 15-24 year-old demographic segment).
To take just two broad examples, FOCAL’s occupational forecasts for automotive manufacturing for the period 2021-2030 are:
- In Ontario the sector’s projected recruitment gap is 30,000 employees, almost a fifth of the province’s current automotive manufacturing workforce.
- In Quebec the recruitment gap for the same time period is just under 5,000 employees, or about a third of the current provincial sectoral workforce.
