The
information on this webpage, authored by Paul Martin P.Eng., was originally
published on the website of “Engineers for Engineers” in 2005. That website no
longer exists, so the links given below no longer work.
In 2013,
there are still extremely serious indications that the lessons of this
information have been largely over-looked - in that there is still no general
recognition at federal government level, and generally, of the true short-fall
in engineering jobs available relative
to the numbers of engineers applying for jobs at any given time. In fact, this
is part of a much larger general problem across all the trades and professions
in Canada.
Since 2003
I have seen figures between 36 and 5,000 quoted for the number of people
applying for any and every job opening in engineering and technology. As an example, Paul Swinwood quoted a range
of 300 to 800 in April 2003 when he was President of the then-Software Human
Resources Council in Canada. You sometimes see figures - typically in the range
of 4 to 7- quoted for the ratio of people looking for jobs to job openings
available, but where each of these people has to apply for many jobs before
achieving success.
Therefore,
I would caution anybody against assuming that the information is “out of date”,
or some such. That said, better information has since become available.
What is
shown here will become “out of date” only when the lessons of it have been
fully taken account of by the federal government and others in the management
of the Canadian economy - such that it actually provides full employment for
all who want to work or need to work, including professional engineers.
Robert T.
Chisholm, Nov. 27 2013 – Associate Member, O.S.P.E.
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Backgrounder: Engineering Supply In Canada
“Recent graduates and
recent immigrants seeking work as engineers in Canada have been suffering
unprecedented problems in finding employment. The reason is simple: supply
has out-stripped reasonable expectations of demand for engineers by a wide
margin. “
Cumulative over-supply of engineers 1990-2002
EXPLANATION
Even if we assume that there was full employment for engineers in
1990 (there wasn’t!), and that engineering job growth out-stripped economic and
general jobs growth in Canada by a margin of two to one (a figure I consider to
be optimistic), we’re STILL looking at a cumulative over-supply to Canada of
some 85,000 engineers between 1990 and 2002 (see the inset graph generated
using these assumptions). Given that engineering supply rates have stabilized
near or above 2002 levels for 2003 and 2004, it is certain that the cumulative
over-supply of engineers has now exceeded 100,000- and it’s growing daily with
no end in sight!
Considering there are only ~66,000 licensed professional engineers
in the Province of Ontario, this is a very drastic over-supply situation!
An increasing number of “skilled workers” are being lured to
Canada by promises of a great future, only to find a near total lack of
opportunity due to over-supply. Graduates of engineering, after enduring a
tough course of study and after accumulating considerable student debt, are
also finding that there are few opportunities for them to gain entry to the
profession.
With misinformation about the supply and demand situation, recent
immigrants increasingly conclude that they are being deliberately excluded from
the profession of engineering despite a shortage of engineers. And they are
lobbying to eliminate licensing rules (such as the Canadian experience year)
which are essential to protect public safety. In reality, the recent
immigrants (and recent grads too) are being out-competed for a limited number
of jobs by engineers who already have Canadian experience and who therefore a
lower “hire risk” to prospective employers.
What Can We Do About the Over-Supply Situation?
Should we panic, close
the engineering schools and slam the doors shut to immigration for engineers?
Certainly not! This site is NOT anti-immigration or anti-student- quite
the opposite! Immigration is beneficial to Canada culturally, to
offset Canada’s declining birth rate, and in other ways too numerous to
mention. And we will always need young, fresh engineers to replace engineers
who retire or leave the profession for other opportunities. But sensible
immigration policy must take into account job market realities, or run the risk
of creating huge problems in the lives of recent immigrants. The same goes for
the process of setting university enrollments in professional programs like
engineering.
It is clear that all
prospective engineering students and engineering immigrants deserve access to
up-to-date, region- and discipline-specific information about labour force
demand and the outcomes of previous waves of students/immigrants prior to
making their critical decision to enter an engineering program of study, or to
immigrate to Canada. This site is my own small attempt to begin that process.
If engineering immigrants persist and come to Canada despite knowledge of the
over-supply situation and the (poor) outcomes of the previous wave of
immigrants- they’re absolutely welcome- but we will not be pressured to destroy
the institutions of our profession and put the public safety at risk in a vain
attempt to find them jobs!
To promote membership
in our profession when it is in a state of massive over-supply is not in
anyone’s best interests, except perhaps in the narrow, short-term interests of
a few greedy businesspeople who profit from low wages and inferior working
condition expectations brought about by our current oversupply. But if
immigrants come in full knowledge that they may have to change careers to find
work here, or take an inferior job to provide a better life for their children-
that’s their business, and in fact it is the proud history of a great many
previous immigrants to Canada.
Sources of Data
All the data presented
on this site is derived from publicly-available sources- some of which you have
to pay money to receive access to. Here is a list of some of the data sources,
in more detail than presented on the facing page:
- CCPE
reports of total undergraduate degrees granted by CEAB-accredited institutions
in Canada
- CIC
data for skilled worker, principal applicants only (not including
dependants)
- CIC
data as collected for the CCPE licensure uptake study, CRG File 03-175, as
summarized by The Corporate Research Group Ltd., reportedly including dependants
of principal applicants. 1990 through 1996 figures are ratio estimates
from number from item 2
- Total
of CEAB grads (row 1) and immigrants (row 3)
- Stats
Canada data for real GDP in $US
- BMO
Financial Group- Real GDP and Employment Growth (www.bmo.com/economic)
- Stats
Canada data for Canadian total workforce, in thousands (table 282-0007,
labour force survey 3701)
- Relative
Canadian employment growth, product of Canadian workforce growth since
1990 and CEAB grads rate, 1990 from source 1
- Total
engineers per year in 1990, extrapolated based on twice the rate of
national overall labour force growth (7) every year since then
- Cumulative
oversupply: number of engineers graduated/immigrated each year (row 3a)in
excess of estimated demand (row 7b) since 1990
Engineers and Licensure
Unlike most regulated
professions, there are both licensed and non-licensed engineers in Canada.
Roughly 50% of engineers who graduate in Canada go on to obtain a license to
practice professional engineering. Licensed professional engineers have legal
rights and responsibilities granted by the provincial Engineering Acts as
administered and enforced by the provincial engineering licensure bodies.
However, in reality it is neither necessary to have a license to find a job as an
engineer, nor is having a license any guarantee of finding employment in
Canada.
Rather than forcing all
graduates to take technical examinations prior to licensure, the profession of
engineering has chosen to accredit educational programs and degree-granting
institutions. All professional engineers in Ontario, for instance, must meet
the following requirements (see http://web.archive.org/web/20090731211109/http://www.eng4eng.ca/www.peo.on.ca
for details): they must be of good character, they must have at least a
Bachelor’s degree in applied science from an accredited university program OR
pass the required technical examinations, and they must have a minimum of four
years of mentored experience (an “internship” as is common in all regulated
professions). At least one year of mentored experience must be gained in
Canada, to ensure the applicant has adequate knowledge of the applicable
Canadian codes, standards, regulations and business practices required to
practice as a professional engineer. Once an applicant has met these
requirements, they must also pass a written Professional Practice Examination
testing their knowledge of the ethical and legal responsibilities of a
professional engineer.
Taking the province of
Ontario as an example, prospective immigrants can begin the licensure
application process prior to immigration to Canada. Currently, Professional
Engineers Ontario receives more applications from internationally-educated
engineers than it does from those graduating from Canadian universities. About
70% of engineers educated outside Canada who apply for licenses in Ontario are
granted recognition of their engineering education without having to write a
single technical exam (unlike virtually any other profession in Canada). And if
an applicant meets all of the educational and experience requirements except
for the 12-month Canadian experience requirement, they can be granted a
Provisional License. Currently, ~ 30% of PEO’s licensees were educated outside
Canada. Does this sound like a “closed profession” which does not accept
newcomers? Hardly! In fact, the engineering profession has received awards for
how open and accepting it is toward newcomers!
What Has Caused the Oversupply Situation?
A number of factors
have combined to produce the oversupply of engineers:
- consistent
lobbying by business interests who complain of a “general shortage of
skilled workers”, and of particular skill shortages which change from time
to time
- a
general confusion of “skills” with “education” in Canada’s immigration
policy, such that highly educated immigrants are favoured over skilled
tradespeople, many categories of whom actually are in short supply in
Canada’s marketplace. Ironically, some of these skilled tradespeople are
deported despite having jobs, while many immigrants are legally accepted
without any reasonable expectation of finding employment suitable to their
experience and education.
- increases
in university engineering enrollments (particularly in electrical and
computer engineering) in an attempt to ease the short-term effects of the
“high-tech boom”, which were not reversed when the high-tech sector
crashed in 2000-2001
- university
enrollment increases for the “double cohort” in Ontario resulting from the
elimination of high-school grade 13, which were not revised back to lower
numbers at all universities once the double cohort year was over
- deregulation
of professional program tuition in Ontario by the Harris government,
resulting in a dependence by the universities on professional program
enrollments to ensure adequate levels of funding
- recruitment
efforts by the engineering profession in an attempt to attract more women
to the profession, and to build public awareness and profile for the
profession
- alterations
in Canadian immigration policy in response to the strong business lobby,
culminating in the 2002 Immigrant and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA).
Whereas immigration levels were once limited by quotas set by profession
based on measures of workforce demand, the preamble to the IRPA basically
states that the economy’s workforce needs now change too rapidly to manage
in this fashion. The new system therefore merely qualifies immigrants
based on a “points system” which gives points for the applicant’s
educational background, work experience, “adaptability” and language
skill, and does not consider the demand for their services in the
workforce!
- factors
which have tended to depress Canadian engineering demand, including
increased imports of goods and services (including engineering services)
from the developing world. The importation of technical services has been
facilitated by the development of the Internet, e-mail and electronic
document transfer etc.
- continued
under-investment in pure research and particularly in process and product
development by both the Canadian business- and public sectors. Imagine:
our national innovation strategy, a 100+ page document, does not contain
the words “engineer” or “engineering”!
Startling Facts In Relation to the Current Over-Supply and
Under-Utilization of Engineers
- yearly engineering supply from all sources has grown by a factor of three,
and immigration into the engineering profession has increased by a factor
of twelve, in a decade in which net jobs and economic growth in Canada has
been less than 20%
- reasonable
estimates of economic and jobs growth since 1990 indicate an oversupply of
over 85,000 engineers to Canada’s workforce between 1990 and 2002
- we are
currently graduating and immigrating 10-15,000 more engineers every year
than our Canadian economy can reasonably expect to employ
- a
popular mythology has sprung up, about the immigrant engineer who is well
qualified but excluded from the workforce because his credentials are not
recognized. THIS IS A MYTH! The real situation is that there is a vast
over-supply of engineers, such that even well-qualified immigrant
engineers and recent graduates cannot find work befitting their skills and
experience. Those jobs that do exist are being taken by engineers who
already have Canadian work experience and hence represent a lower hire
risk to prospective employers.
- more
than 75% of all skilled workers immigrating to Canada who intend to work
in a regulated profession are engineers: this includes the total of all
doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, veterinarians, optometrists,
accountants…
- 54% of
skilled worker immigrants settle in Toronto: a city which represents only
about 17% of Canada’s overall job market. The overall over-supply of
engineers is most extreme in Canada’s major population centers- and most
particularly in Toronto.
- of the
~600 recent immigrant engineers in Ontario surveyed by the Council for
Access to the Profession of Engineering (www.capeinfo.ca) , only about 20%
were employed as engineers and only about 50% were employed in any
occupation
Ontario engineering graduates in 2000 were 25% more likely than the
average university graduate to be unemployed in 2002. Computer engineers
had a rate of unemployment higher than that of the general population
(i.e. including all persons with all levels of education)
- though
significant labour force adjustments can be expected when the “baby boom”
generation begins to retire, the first year of the baby boom was 1947:
these people won’t reach retirement age until 2012. The peak of the baby
boom was in 1959: these people will reach retirement age in 2024…Skilled
worker immigration to address baby boomer retirements would seem premature
by nearly a generation!
- some
senior engineers and engineering educators consider engineering to be the
“new liberal arts education”, and have no expectation that engineering
graduates should have the opportunity to work as engineers if they so
choose! This attitude is not marginal- it is surprisingly widespread!
recent surveys have indicated that a large fraction of working
professional engineers consider themselves to be “overqualified for the
work they do”, and that about 75% of professional
- engineers
have no defined, restricted area of practice available to them by virtue
of their licenses. A large fraction of engineers are not engaged in the
practice of engineering as conventionally defined.
- engineers
are crafty, well-educated people who can usually find something to do for
a living- even if it does not involve engineering. Underemployment in our
profession is neither studied nor reported, and is therefore totally
missed in statistics related to engineering unemployment. Studies such as
those carried out by the Council of Ontario Universities do not ask the
question, “Are you employed directly in your field of study” when
surveying recent graduates, and hence underemployment by recent graduates
goes completely unreported.
- unemployment
statistics for engineers in general are not frequently collected and
reported either: rather, the special subset of licensed professional
engineers are studied to indicate the employment prospects for engineers
in general! Therefore, the massive unemployment in the recent graduate and
recent immigrant segment of our profession goes unreported
- we
still hear reports of localized shortages of engineers. Why? Because some
firms cannot find enough people with Canadian experience to fill certain
positions. And why is that? Because firms have not been hiring at the
entry level, hence there actually IS a shortage of engineers in some
disciplines with “sufficient Canadian experience” to fill particular
intermediate to senior-level positions. And some firms want to hire
experienced engineers with inadequate pay and on “contract”, with no job
security- it’s no surprise that they cannot find experienced engineers
willing to take these jobs!
Concrete Measures YOU Can Take to Combat the Oversupply of
Engineers
- write
a letter to the Hon. Diane Finley, Minister of Immigration,
Finley.D@parl.gc.ca and the Hon. Monte Solberg, Minister of Human
Resources Development (Solberg.M@parl.gc.ca) Explain to them the massive
over-supply of engineers, and ask them what they’re DOING about it!
- write
a letter to the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada
(Harper.S@parl.gc.ca) , and make him aware of the massive over-supply of
engineers!
- write
a letter to Marie Lemay, P.Eng., CEO of the Canadian Council of
Professional Engineers, (www.ccpe.ca) and ask her why CCPE is expending
millions of dollars of HRDC money to study ways to integrate
foreign-trained engineers into NON-EXISTENT JOBS!
- write
a letter to Michael Monette, P.Eng., President of the Ontario Society of
Professional Engineers, (www.ospe.on.ca) and to Walter Bilanski, P.Eng.,
President of Professional Engineers Ontario, (www.peo.on.ca) and ask them
why the profession has been SILENT on the oversupply of engineers to
Canada over the past decade!
- ·Telephone
or e-mail your local MP and MPP, and let them know that this issue is
important to you!
- if you
are a recent graduate of an engineering program, or you have an education
as an engineer and have been unable to find suitable work as an engineer,
contact your university, your advocacy body and your professional
licensing body, and let them KNOW that you exist! Gather all your
colleagues in the same situation and write a joint letter to these bodies
and these politicians. Tell them that you VOTE and that this is an important
issue to you!
- if you
hear a media story propagating the myth of the immigrant engineer excluded
from the workforce because their credentials aren’t recognized, phone or
write the media outlet and set them straight! Point them HERE- so they too
will have the facts!
- contact
CAPE (www.capeinfo.ca), Engineers for Engineers (www.eng4eng.ca) and
anyone else who will listen!
References and Suggested Reading
CCPE’s From
Consideration To Integration reports from Phases I and II
(http://web.archive.org/web/20090731211109/http://www.eng4eng.ca/www.ccpe.ca/e/imm_consideration_1.cfm)
Publications of the
Council of Ontario Universities
(http://web.archive.org/web/20090731211109/http://www.eng4eng.ca/www.cou.on.ca)
PEO’s information with
respect to the licensure of recent immigrant engineers (www.peo.on.ca)
Citizenship and
Immigration Canada’s Facts and Figures
(http://web.archive.org/web/20090731211109/http://www.eng4eng.ca/www.cic.gc.ca/english/pub/facts2002/index.html)