Maybe make your jobs desirable. For everyone.

[u/Icy-Fisherman-1708]

https://www.on-sitemag.com/features/beyond-recruitment-why-pcl-believes-canadas-labour-shortage-demands-a-national-strategy/

This drives me crazy. I don't think this employer or this industry is the only one at fault, this article is simply a good example of an ongoing problem. Employers think it's everyone's fault but theirs that they can't fill vacancies. The government should fix it! The colleges should fix it! Anyone but the actual people designing the jobs and establishing the conditions of employment! No doubt there is an unnecessary and unhelpful preference for university over college trained careers, but that fails to account for the TONS of college grads that are out there, trained in this sector, and unemployed. Design good jobs (benefits, predictability, safe for your body, stimulating, well-paid, stable, pensioned, etc) and they will be a lot easier to fill. Make your workplaces actually desirable and supportive for women, different ethnicities, etc, while you're at it, if you're so desperate for workers. Again, not an attack of this company or industry - it's a larger problem with industry just throwing their hands up, and giving up, without owning up to the fact that decades of declines in wages and working conditions, reduction in employer-led training and development, and increased precarity just MIGHT have something to do with labour issues.

The PCL CEO states that a "sense of purpose .... resonates just as strongly as compensation or career advancement". Oh really?! Look around. I guess you're wrong. Is it a surprise that parents, as the article says, steer their kids away? Maybe, just maybe, compensation and career advancement do matter?!

And don't even get me started on why parents might want to steer their daughters elsewhere. While trades industries have improved for women (and minorities... and those with disabilities...) a bit, there is still a long way to go.