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A coming engineering shortage ? ---- Who agrees ? 86

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spraytechnology,

...Nevertheless I could never understand why in Canada and Australia would be migrants with engineering qualifications would migrate on that basis while clearly most of them will never make it or find a job in engineering. Am I missing something here?

As I recently cleared a migration procedure for skilled engineers which allowed me to move to Canada, I also don't understand this situation (... well I prefer to say I don't...). Paradox here is that, it is more likely for us to find a job in a country where clearing work permit stuffs is considered to be difficult. I kind of experienced having an engineering job with work permit limitation and having unlimited work permit without job, it was either one or the other.

The later situation is the most dangerous as it DIVERT people and push them to undertake any type of survival job or job that is not fit for their qualifications with the risk of staying there for their entire life.

What the local economy gets however is a fully (abroad) educated taxi driver, cooker, security guard - so the upside, if there are any, will be at zero investment cost for sure.


 
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rotw,,, I will say it as unpleasant it may sound.

Migration in Canada Australia New Zealand is a mega business. It has no migrant best interests at heart. The economy feeds of the large intake drives real estate prices high stimulates demand, consumption but in the globalized world not necessarily creates jobs.

In US if you can clear the visa hurdle very likely you ll get a professional job. In the other countries the professional markets are very small and with a huge oversupply of professional engineers that cleared the visa hurdle, the competition is fierce. Without an anglo degree the chances are slim to get a professional job.
 
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spraytechnology: I agree with everything you've said, except I'd add that thousands of immigrants DO succeed in finding professional positions in Canada every year. The problem is that 10,000 come every year, which leaves thousands disappointed, leaving, or in survival jobs. The even sadder part is that the thousands who do manage to find work, tend to displace the children of the previous generation of immigrants from entry-level positions that they would ordinarily be destined for. An oversupply marketplace hurts new entrants of both kinds- fresh grads and fresh immigrants both- and the fresh grads are, substantially, the children of the last cohort of immigrants who took survival jobs to provide better opportunities for their children.

We need to get real, in Canada in particular, that the economy is just not capable of creating a cushy white collar job for every kid capable of graduating from university- and changing what courses you teach in university really doesn't and cannot change that fact.
 
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moltenmetal....so what is the solution? the demand from would be immigrants will always be there.

I do like the US systems where the legal migration is heavily regulated, by doing this US keeps a somewhat a balanced economy.

And what professional jobs migrants do find? are career jobs or fill in demand jobs, temporary or contracts? In Australia now many jobs are term or contract, kinda a shift to the gig economy even in engineering.

Since most Universities depend on goverment funding, they should restrict intake lifting standards of entry with a view to future market demand, no point to churn out graduates to jobs that do no exist.
 
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"I do like the US systems where the legal migration is heavily regulated, by doing this US keeps a somewhat a balanced economy"

Hah! Someone has bought into the newspeak. Our H1B program has almost never been about filling a hiring gap. We used to have a couple of H1Bs at a previous company, and the putative job requisition was curiously written around the exact qualifications of the subjects, even though, much as I liked them, were not particularly stellar as engineers. Moreover, it's only been recently that the State Department decided that the setting a minimum salary was necessary, because the bottom line was that our H1Bs got paid significantly lower than US residents and citizens.

And, one has to wonder whether some of the 50% that opt out of a STEM career do so because they were supplanted by an H1B. Given that starting engineers in Silicon Valley are now routinely getting $100k+ starting salaries, paying even $85k for an equally qualified H1B would seem to be a bargain.

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spraytechnology: the solution for whom?

As far as the government is concerned, the current situation IS a solution...They can't count on real economic growth continuing at the pace it happened in previous decades, so they're trying to plaster over the resulting gap with demographic growth in the hope the population doesn't notice the difference. The population aren't having kids at the rate they once did, so how do you keep the population growing so you can keep the pyramid scam afloat? Allow mass immigration... They're terrified of the country becoming Japan, with an aging workforce which will become a revenue drain rather than a revenue stream for them by means of income taxes, and they see immigration as a way to avoid that.

The real problem, though, is that demographic (population) growth is very different in its economic effects and benefits than real economic growth. Demographic growth does increase economic activity as measured by GDP- the new people at minimum have to pay for food and rent, for instance. However, the GDP growth from demographic growth isn't as efficient at generating wealth as organic economic growth is. GDP is a poor measure of what we really want, because a war or a natural disaster both increase GDP by forcing people to spend money while destroying wealth. So, part of the problem is that we're controlling by using the wrong gauge of success.

If you're asking what the solution is for immigrants to Canada, the answer is simple: let fewer of them come, and tie the immigration of working-age people to the labour force demand for their services. The ones who do come, will do better, because they will no longer be the overflow in a flooded labour market. That's also the solution to reduce the damage being done to our cohort of fresh grads: businesses will hire them and train them, but only if they can't find people who have already been trained at others' expense. There's room, on top of that, for some refuges and asylum seekers who will be grateful to come even if they end up with poor economic attainment as a result. But economic immigration, of working age people whose lives are not under threat in their home countries? It should be done ENTIRELY on the basis of the MEASURED labour market NEEDS of Canada- not the "wants" of its employers, because they will always want more supply so they can pay less for labour. There is no other basis upon which it makes sense to allow economic immigration, especially in a country with the generous social support system that we have here- universal basic health care, free public education (including now at the post-secondary level in some provinces) etc. etc.

Canada's entire labour market policy makes no sense to me whatsoever, and hasn't for decades. It certainly does not, to me, seem to be consistent with Canada's national interest.

 
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Seems to me that by your argument, if there's no demonstrated need, per the GDP, then there should be no immigration, and you would, therefore, be in exactly the same situation as Japan, which is what you supposedly don't want.

The US, on the other hand, depending on who you believe, is either controlling its immigration well, or is being overrun by illegals. Regardless of that, the US GDP is still growing.

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To correct your misperception IRstuff: I'm not against immigration- just against economic immigration that doesn't solve a legitimate labour market purpose. Hundreds of thousands immigrate to Canada every year under other classes- refugees/asylum seekers, family reunification etc., and that's OK with me.

I have no fear of Canada turning into Japan- others fear that far more than I do. Demographic growth for its own sake isn't in the Canadian national interest in my view- our focus should be on real economic growth, and dealing with the consequences that arise from not having it when it isn't happening rather than pretending that it IS happening. Providing that false veneer of demographic growth over the economic growth figures is definitely in the political interest of the people making the decisions about economic immigration numbers.

In the US, AT LEAST you have the H1B visa system. We have no such system here- economic immigration isn't subject to the type of controls you have working in the US, like them or not. And you have more trouble with illegal immigration by far than we do, but we still have a problem with it- something like 600 people crossed the Quebec border from the US illegally in the last week alone, most of them being Haitians seeking asylum in Canada. Doesn't sound like much? Donny was mobilizing the military against a group about that size, last I noticed- and we're 1/10th your population.

 
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Sorry, I don't think I was even thinking that deeply about motivations, on anyone's part.

I was struck by a comment I heard on NPR this morning from a person on the verge being of totally homeless, even though he's working multiple jobs nad has an MBA. He asks, "why don't "they" create more jobs?" He, in a nutshell is a poster-child for many of our problems. "They" are some formless, unknown beings who will create jobs where none are needed, and who will build affordable housing where housing prices are so high that even if "they" did build something, the prices would simply get bid up by the people who are higher up on the economic food chain than he is. To that degree, while we have nearly full employment, some of our citizens are clearly worse off than their $100k-debt fueled MBA lives were expected to turn out. And, it's doubly surprising that an MBA, who surely must have come across Econ 101 at some point in his 46 yrs, doesn't understand how economics works, or can't seem to apply his book learning to why his situation is the way it is. Of course, one might be cynically thinking that this disconnect in thinking is probably why he didn't get hired for the MBA-level jobs he applied for when he got his degree.

One of my great disappointments in life was that realization that not everyone is above average, and that the bell-shaped curve is validly applied to certain people who simply don't have the mental horsepower or fortitude needed to succeed, even a little bit. These people continue to live and struggle, believing in the American Dream, but reality puts them far away from that ideal. But we, as a society, seemingly need to have those people lead their lives of quiet, or not so quiet, desperation so that the rest of us can buy that Double-latte, served by a smiling person carrying a $100k debt that secured their now-useless MBA. So, while the US seemingly appears to be soft and rosy, the reality is grimmer and grimier than that casual glance can encompass.

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so that the rest of us can buy that Double-latte, served by a smiling person carrying a $100k debt that secured their now-useless MBA.
Click to expand...

The sad reality is that in years gone past someone like that could've fairly easily stepped into an unskilled or low-skilled labor position as their fallback and survived if not prospered. Depending on where he lives however that's often nearly impossible in the US today so the choice is serving coffee, fries, or Walmart.
 
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If that person is "on the verge being of totally homeless", let's not add insult to injury by badmouthing them, pointing out for instance to their lack of aptitudes. Just a personal perspective. Speculating why they did not get hired due to their "thinking disconnect" is literally and cynically disgusting.

This was a comment aside.

 
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IRstuff: great post.

Like I said, the problem is that we're collectively feeding people the lie that there's a nice, cushy white-collar job waiting for you if you can just get through that bachelor's level engineering degree, MBA, or what have you. They're believing what they're being sold, and then being disappointed when it doesn't come true. It's not their fault- it's the fault of the dishonest people who are peddling false hope to them. Then we rub salt into the wound by telling them that if (for about half of them it's more properly "when") they fail, it's all their fault- they chose the wrong program, or the wrong discipline, or the wrong region of the country, or the wrong industry etc. etc.- just look at all those businesses claiming that they have jobs going unfilled because they can't find qualified candidates! Look at those jobs at Google and Facebook etc. paying all those big bucks!

The comfortable lie is preferable to the truth in this case, to both the liar and the gullible believer- for a while, until economic reality catches up with them personally. False hope is preferable to despair. Unfortunately, until a problem is acknowledged as existing, it cannot be analyzed and real solutions cannot be implemented.

That anyone 40+ yrs old with any kind of post-graduate level education (if an MBA qualifies as education) would be capable of, without irony, expecting that there's a "them" out there who COULD make a job for them, but chooses not to in some kind of economic fit of pique against people like him/her, is pretty tough to imagine. That said, my experience with people grows daily, and regrettably teaches me repeatedly that people can usually be counted on to challenge your minimum expectations. Fortunately I'm smart enough to realize that I need to constantly recalibrate my minimum expectations as a result, rather than grinding myself up over being disappointed by people not meeting my imagined standards.



 
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CWB1: also dead right. If I were to lose my job and seek one at the local Tim Hortons coffee shop, I would be out-competed for that position by Phillipine guest workers who are sending all their money home to help their poor relatives. Hey- they likely therefore need that job way more than I do, so I guess from a global perspective it's all fine- but looking at it from the position of Canadian national interest? Not so much, in my opinion. Not only have we exported many opportunities at the bottom of the labour market (retail and service industry jobs like working at Timmies) such that 3/4 of the jobs high school kids might have taken as an entry into the experience of working for a living, but the money being generated from that labour isn't even circulating locally any more- it's going out of country in a Western Union money transfer.
 
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Yes people are being replaced by machines, and we are exporting those machines. So it makes since that there is a need to import job seekers, as the global demand for low IQ jobs dries up.

It's a global economy, that gets smaller every day.

Cheaper and faster seems to be the business cry.
 
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Reading the news in Australia. Current intake of migrants is at 190000 and subject to hot debate as it puts lots of demand on the infrastructure in particular in Sydney and Melbourne leading to a substantial drop in standards of living,i.e. commute, congestion, pollution, cost of living etc.....

What puzzled I was the long list of occupations listed with the Immigration Dept and approved by Engineers Australia. Many migrants pass the visa hurdle within many of the listed professions but can tell for sure there are no jobs listed in the open markets for some of the disciplines, maybe in the hidden market but doubt it.

sample below

Ship's engineer 231212 AMSA
Ship's master 231213 AMSA
Ship's officer 231214 AMSA
Architect 232111 AACA
Landscape architect 232112 VETASSESS
Cartographer 232213 VETASSESS
Other Spatial Scientist 232214 VETASSESS
Surveyor 232212 SSSI
Chemical engineer 233111 Engineers Australia
Materials engineer 233112 Engineers Australia
Civil engineer 233211 Engineers Australia
Geotechnical engineer 233212 Engineers Australia
Quantity surveyor 233213 AIQS
Structural engineer 233214 Engineers Australia
Transport engineer 233215 Engineers Australia
Electrical engineer 233311 Engineers Australia
Electronics engineer 233411 Engineers Australia
Industrial engineer 233511 Engineers Australia
Mechanical engineer 233512 Engineers Australia
Production or plant engineer 233513 Engineers Australia
Mining engineer (excluding petroleum) 233611 Engineers Australia
Petroleum engineer 233612 Engineers Australia
Aeronautical engineer 233911 Engineers Australia
Agricultural engineer 233912 Engineers Australia
Biomedical engineer 233913 Engineers Australia
Engineering technologist 233914 Engineers Australia
Environmental engineer 233915 Engineers Australia
Naval architect 233916 Engineers Australia
Agricultural consultant 234111 VETASSESS
Agricultural scientist 234112 VETASSESS
Forester 234113 VETASSESS
Medical laboratory scientist 234611 AIMS
Veterinarian 234711 AVBC
Metallurgist 234912
 
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If I use an average of $700 AU for the assessment fee that these organizations require, that comes out to $14M AU for the lot, so a not insubstantial monetary incentive to bring migrants in.

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Its $133M dollars by the way. But I hope this was ironic.
Each is going to bring at least 20/30 k dollars per year (and believe me spend almost of it).
e.g. in Canada, you are required to bring (justify) about 20k per year to pass the border officer during the landing.
$30000 x 0.19 M = $5.7 billion. I am pretty sure, a good portion of it is going to form the next generation of highly educated waitress. A certain portion, will land a qualified job. I hope I speak out of frustration and my view is biased...and that all this is not a massive scam.

 
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From today s paper in The AGE, some key paragraphs......

790000 are listed as out of work, how many more do not show up in this number, aka being on other benefits or not entitled...I assume is double the number...

""""That's very good news but it hasn’t made much difference to the unemployment rate. The latest figures put the rate at 5.6 per cent, exactly what it was six months ago.

So what’s going on? The Reserve Bank puts it this way: employment growth has been “strong enough to absorb growth in the working-age population, although not high enough to reduce the unemployment rate further”."""

""" When you have a growing population like ours you need be hitting record levels all the time just to keep up – that goes for jobs as well as spending on things like infrastructure and social services."""

"hese days, politicians don’t talk much about unemployment.

When I searched the flurry of transcripts for media interviews and speeches done by Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten so far this month the words "unemployment" or “unemployed” never appeared.

And it's not just politicians – journalists don’t often ask about unemployment.

Somehow those 730,000 Australians without a job seem to have slipped down the political agenda.

That’s a pity because there are some worrying trends buried in the unemployment numbers.

The latest trend figures showed 94,000 Australians have been out of work for two years or more, the highest in 18 years.

Also, there has been a sustained rise in the share of jobless Australians who are experiencing long-term unemployment – those who are out of work for 12 months or more.

In early 2009, just before the economy felt the effects of the global financial crisis, one in eight jobless Australians had been unemployed for a year or more. Now that share has risen to about one in every four.

There’s significant human cost behind these statistics because unemployment is much more than an economic issue.

Many studies have drawn attention to the misery and unhappiness associated with being out of work.

Long-term unemployment is especially damaging.

The Fairfax-Lateral Economics Wellbeing Index estimates the economic cost of long-term unemployment was $13.6 billion last year.

Even so, these thorny challenges exposed each month in our official jobs figures rarely figure in political debate.

With global growth the strongest it has been in sometime Australia is lagging many advanced country counterparts when it comes to unemployment.

The United States (4.1 per cent) Britain (4.3), New Zealand (4.5) and Germany (3.6) all have unemployment rates well below ours.

We know the Australian economy can produce much lower rates of unemployment.

The trend rate of unemployment was 4.5 per cent or lower for most of 2007 and 2008, prior to the global financial crisis.

One key figure who does still talk a lot about unemployment is the Reserve Bank Governor, Philip Lowe. One of the bank’s mandates is “the maintenance of full employment in Australia.”"""

“Immigration is a no-brainer, you know that it is not a problem when the unemployment rate is continuing to trend down," he said.

Employment rose every month in a calendar year for the first time in four decades in 2017 after the economy added almost 400,000 jobs.

NSW finished the year on the precipice of the natural rate of unemployment at 4.8 per cent while Victoria hit 6.1 per cent.

There are only two Labor-held areas identified by the report as having up to 70 per cent population growth owing to immigration, they belong to Anthony Albanese in Sydney’s inner-west and Julie Owens in Parramatta.

Immigrants consume less in government services than they pay in tax, making the federal government billions over their lifetimes, a landmark Treasury analysis has found, even when their expensive final years of life are taken into account.

But the research, published by Treasury and the Department of Home Affairs, has come under fire from some population experts who believe it glosses over the link between migration and higher home prices, congestion, and strain on the environment.

The landmark study found in total, permanent skilled migrants deliver the federal government a profit of $6.9 billion over their lifetimes, temporary skilled migrants a profit of $3.9 billion, and family stream migrants $1.6 billion.


 
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I think that 100% employment is theoretically, economically, and practically impossible and possibly undesirable. With 0% unemployment, the supply curve is inelastic, and this results in essentially infinite wages, which is impractical and bad for the economy, in general. Given that we have not had, for centuries now, non-specialized jobs, matching skills to available jobs is continually moving target and not practically achievable.

What we, as a society do with those that cannot fit into the economy is something that likely needs to be outside of the supply/demand environment of the jobs market. Just as there those that refuse to be law-abiding citizens, there are going to those that won't, or can't, ever fit into the jobs market. Whether they need to, or should, be put on welfare or something else is societal problem.

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