The latest report based on the annual B.C. Apprenticeship Student Outcomes survey found that 85% of students who had completed an apprenticeship program had found a job compared with 77% in the general workforce who were employed when the survey was taken.
According to the BCStats report, almost all of the respondents who had a job found their position in less than a month, with 91% in a field that was related to their training.
Most trades pay higher than the provincial average of $23.58 per hour. Aside from chefs and cooks, who on average are paid $13 an hour, most trades’ hourly rate is between $25 and $30. They include auto mechanics, carpenters, electrical tradesmen ($25 to $26) and contractors and machinery and transportation equipment mechanics, who are paid at least $30 an hour. Young Canadians seem most keen to get into a trade. In 2011, the typical student who completed his or her apprenticeship program was 27 years old. Most of them were men. Only 9% of former apprentices were women and nearly half of those were in the culinary arts.
While former apprentices have generally fared better than workers in other fields, they are still subject to the economic cycle. The report noted that since the global financial crisis, unemployment rates in the trades have remained above average, jumping to 8% in 2009 and to 11% in 2010-11 from average unemployment rates of 3% prior to 2008. While the construction industry employment increased in 2011, the total number of people working in the industry has continued to fall in 2012’s first half. According to the latest Labour Force Survey from Statistics Canada, B.C. construction employment has dropped 8% to 189,900 in June from 207,100 in December.
Some of that loss has been offset by a steady increase in manufacturing jobs for the past nine months. StatsCan reported manufacturing employment in B.C. has risen 21.5% to 194,500 in June from 160,000 in October.
With a strong pipeline of major construction projects in B.C., and thousands of jobs expected from Seaspan’s multibillion-dollar federal government shipbuilding contract, tradesmen have some solid prospects in the years ahead. •
