So, er, this is interesting...
A shift in the labour market has put employers in Newfoundland and Labrador on the defensive, with many saying they are unable to find qualified applicants despite the largest unemployment queues in Canada.
"We're looking for people with a [high school] education, that have some background and work history," said David Gill, who has been exasperated trying to recruit workers for Terra Footwear in Harbour Grace.
With a need to increase production to fill an order of 53,000 pairs of military boots, the company was surprised to learn it has not nearly enough qualified applicants.
"We're finding more and more there are a lot of people out there with no work history or who don't have high school completion," Gill told CBC News.
Er, but, I thought there was lots of unemployment out there. And indeed there is:
Statistics Canada estimates that Newfoundland and Labrador's workforce has grown by about four per cent since the beginning of 2006, with about 9,000 new jobs added to the labour pool.Whoa whoa whoa! Hold the phone! Swiftly shifting sands? It's still eight freaking per cent unemployment. And is Newfoundland really doing so bad that they can't find a bunch of people qualified to work in a boot factory?
However, at 14.2 per cent — the rate recorded in October — the province continues to have the highest unemployment rate in Canada.
The St. John's area, though, has an unemployment rate of eight per cent, and employers there say they have been caught off guard by swiftly shifting sands.
Still, this is unintentionally hilarious: even when there are jobs in Newfoundland, nobody with the smallest amount of skill can be found, having already moved to Alberta. And meanwhile, "dumb Newfie" jokes won't be going away anytime soon now that no less than the CBC tells us how dumb those 14.2% unemployed Newfies are to be turned down for menial labour.
