Under Pressure: Skilled Trades in Hamilton!

Vol. 5, Issue 3, May 17, 2018

Hamilton's Labour Market Connection

Your weekly news & updates from WPH!

In this week's edition: What is the status of the skilled trades in Hamilton?; Vital Signs launch takes place on May 31st; Is gender inclusion on your company's radar; Low unemployment rate for Hamilton.

Under Pressure: Skilled Trades in Hamilton

Under Pressure is a recent WPH project which explores the availability of skilled trades workers in the Industrial, Construction and Motive Power trades.

The report includes labour market information such as the educational breakdown, gender breakdown, ages, and new hires to near-retirees ratio, as well as other information.

Of interest to job seekers and employment service providers will be the occupational profiles section of the report. Highlighted are the occupations that show the strongest employment demands.

Listed is a description of the occupation, median income, number of people employed in 2016, unemployment rate, and more.

Some of the key findings of the report include:

The image of trades is negative
Skill levels (of all types) in apprentices are a concern among employers
Employers may not be investing enough in apprenticeship training.

You can read the entire report and the recommendations here.

On Thursday May 31, please attend a panel discussion with four local experts who will talk about the latest data from the 2018 Vital Signs report.

Panelists include:

Dr. Elizabeth Richardson (City of Hamilton)

Ian Borsuk (Environment Hamilton)

Samantha Jackson (Co-author, EXCLerator Report 2017)

Steve Buist (The Hamilton Spectator)

From our city’s health and the environment to diversity and our neighbourhoods, we’ll get to the why behind the what. If you can’t attend in person, don’t worry – the event will be streaming live on this Facebook page.

The event is free but seating is limited so please register here.

Visit our Website

Gender Inclusion – Are You Following Best Practices?

By now, most employers are aware of the updates to the Human Rights Act that prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression.

In wake of those changes, many organizations now have it on their agendas to create more gender-inclusive workplace policies. But these types of changes sometimes don’t make it to the top of the to-do list, and chances are good most of us could be doing more to encourage gender diversity and inclusion in the workplace.