A wave of retirements is about to crash down on Canada’s already tight construction jobs market, putting at risk ambitious plans to build more homes over the next decade.
Census data from Statistics Canada released last week showed the proportion of Canadians approaching retirement age has never been higher: nearly one in five workers are primed to call it a career in the next five years as the Baby Boomer generation ages out of the workforce.
But in the construction and skilled trades field, an aging workforce is already carrying a bulk of the labour on its back as the number of new entrants to the industry over the past few decades has failed to offset the looming retirements.
And construction isn’t an industry that lends itself well to delayed retirement. Kochar says he has seen the retirement crisis in Canada’s construction industry coming for decades.