HELP WANTED - PEOPLE NEEDED

“Help Wanted” signs adorn our town.   If you're a teenager, and looking for a job, odds are you’ll be in luck.

What’s good for youth and for people looking for retail type jobs however is not so good for the businesses that are busy trying to recruit for them.  Last week’s edition of THE PACKET told the story of how a shortage of retail labour in Clarenville is challenging some businesses, and how one business has taken advantage of the Foreign Worker Program to hire staff from the Philippines (Local businesses recruit foreigners to fill the gaps Sept 26) .   This situation is not unique to Clarenville.  In Happy Valley-Goose Bay over 200 foreign workers are employed in the fast-food/retail industry. 

These stories come as a prelude to the Province launching a Discussion  road-show to discuss the challenges being faced by communities and business as baby boomers retire/die while and fewer young people enter the workforce/communities to replace them.( See : http://www.gov.nl.ca/populationgrowth)    In fact, the Province estimates that there will be more deaths than births and there will be an estimated 70,000 job openings in NL by 2020, of which 7,200 will be new jobs - there just won't be enough people to fill towns and fill jobs. (The Road Show will be holding a Community Workshop Discussion Forum on Tuesday, October 15 at  St. Jude’s Hotel from 6:30 – 9:00 p.m. )

It sounds like a situation for the folks coming out of our schools but the reality is painting a different picture for them and us.   With increasing debt loads and higher expectations (Alberta and off-shore money is the gold standard) these students are simply not willing (nor are they able) to work for wages hovering around the minimum wage.   Many thousands of these folks are simply voting with their feet and moving to the “big” jobs leaving local businesses crying out for workers and towns such as ours, seeking youthful citizens.   You can’t blame our youth for leaving for greener pastures – they are simply being economic maximizes

The scary thing is that as youth move away they may never come back.  Our province’s, and Clarenville’s, biggest export has always been our people and that is challenging our future success. 

The good news is that many of the people who leave still call this place “home”.  I know this because after years of running the Our Town Facebook page we see a lot of them regularly in their comments and in the usage statistics.  40% of the 1100 people on the page don't live here.  

The Challenge for us as a community will be to create the opportunities for our youth to stay, stay in touch with them if they do go and make sure that they always what to come back when the opportunity arises. The Province's Discussion Forum's are nice, but talking about the problem just won't solve the problem.  The solution is "simple" but probably too politically difficult: Higher wages; better, longer term job opportunities and a "nice' place to live and raise a family will be key to retaining livers and attracting newcomers.

OUR-TOWN Facebook - Where people live. (of 1,167 fans)

Clarenville, NL, Canada	626
St. John's, NL, Canada	141
Shoal Harbour, NL, Canada	32
Fort McMurray, AB, Canada	19
Halifax, NS, Canada	16
Calgary, AB, Canada	13
Port Blandford, NL, Canada	11
Toronto, ON, Canada	9
Musgrave Town, NL, Canada	9
Ottawa, ON, Canada	8
Edmonton, AB, Canada	8
Corner Brook, NL, Canada	7
Grande Prairie, AB, Canada	7
Marystown, NL, Canada	7
Mount Pearl, NL, Canada	7
Lethbridge, NL, Canada	6
Bonavista, NL, Canada	6