Question Scans

Question Scans

Question 18: Can British Columbia obtain a sufficient supply of well qualified labour through recruitment from other jurisdictions, including jurisdictions outside Canada?

Overview

The issue of planning for an expected skill shortage was addressed in the question scan Is It Possible to Accurately Forecast labour market needs? and included articles concerned with forecasting skill shortages and/or using such information to plan for post-secondary access. The objective of this question scan was to examine the issues surrounding the supply of qualified labour in British Columbia.

Applying a broad range of applicable search terms to four major databases initially yielded 385 potentially relevant articles. Subsequent examination of article abstracts reduced the number to 45. A search of government and professional/sectoral organization websites yielded an additional nine potentially relevant documents.

An initial review revealed a few articles addressing the concern of producing a sufficient supply of qualified labour and/or supplying the needs through recruitment. Often this literature comprises industry and government reports. Few articles are specific to B.C.; however, Canadian, U.S. and international articles may be relevant to B.C.’s labour situation.

Some articles analyze current labour needs, and raise concerns regarding the quality, timeliness and effectiveness of institutions in training people to meet these needs. To this end, several reports discuss: trends in today’s labour industry; employer concerns in meeting industry needs locally; and, projections of future ability to meet demands through varied training and/or hiring strategies. Other articles focus on economic concerns (e.g., cost of training vs. recruiting).

Literature focussed directly on the economics of meeting labour needs through training locally or recruiting from external jurisdictions may be categorized into three types:

  1. theoretical models estimating costs and benefits;
  2. reports or descriptions of actual labour-market costs; and
  3. evaluations and/or critiques of labour-market strategies.

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