Taking action on addressing regional skilled labour shortage

The LQRDA conducted an exercise with eight of the region’s largest manufactures to identify their projected skilled labour requirements over the next five years. The results were quite staggering — currently, these eight businesses collectively represent approximately 2,000 employees. However, they anticipate that they will require nearly 300 skilled trades people and over 550 production workers by 2016 due to both attrition and projected new growth. Armed with this information the LQRDA organized a meeting with 13 workforce development and training organizations to discuss opportunities to address issues collectively and collaboratively at a regional level. Each organization was asked to provide information on the programs and services relevant to aspects of training, recruitment and retention. We are currently compiling this information to develop a regional ‘road map’ of services for businesses. Additional sessions are being planned to focus on potential solutions to both short-term and longer-term needs. The first of these is set for early May with businesses and representatives from the Nova Scotia Community College