Ontario poised to resume growth in ’21: BuildForce Canada
The COVID-19 pandemic may have slowed down construction employment in Ontario in 2020, but that pull-back was only temporary, says BuildForce Canada in its 2021–2030 Construction and Maintenance Looking Forward report for the province.
The report indicates that the province’s construction market will resume growth this year and continue to expand through 2026. Key drivers of demand include increased spending on major infrastructure, public transit, utility, mining and industrial, commercial and institutional buildings.
As a result, BuildForce’s labour market information system forecasts broad recruiting challenges, and an overall need for the industry to recruit more than 31,000 workers by the end of the decade.
“The disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic moderated the anticipated rapid rise in Ontario’s labour market demand over the near term, but they are not expected to change the anticipated labour market challenges beyond that,” says BuildForce Canada executive director Bill Ferreira. “Commercial building construction was most affected by COVID restrictions, but as the economy reopens, those projects will get back on schedule. This will add to an already-strong inventory of project requirements and could lead to a re-emergence of broad recruiting challenges between 2021 and 2023.”
The report shows that several major transportation, utility and other infrastructure projects started in 2020 are expected to ramp up in 2021 and 2022. Construction requirements over the medium term will be boosted by the anticipated start of several large hospital projects in 2023, while subway expansion plans and regional rail electrification projects in the GTA increase demands and tighten market conditions for some trades through to 2026.
Labour market challenges vary among regions
BuildForce separates Ontario into five regions—Central, Eastern, GTA, Northern and Southwestern—for its planning purposes. Each has its own unique push and pull factors, and will see worker supply and demand vary to different degrees over the scenario period.
“Ontario’s five regions are interconnected, but each tells its own distinct labour market story,” says Ferreira. “We see a number of competing demands for construction and maintenance workers over the decade that, taken together, are likely to limit the potential for intraprovincial labour mobility to satisfy peak regional requirements.”
Southwestern Ontario, for example, will face recruitment challenges in 2021, after a strong year in 2020. This trend is due in part to the start of refurbishment work at the Bruce Power nuclear plant, an acceleration in demands related to the Gordie Howe International Bridge in Windsor, and the Nova Chemicals plant in Sarnia. Further increases in retirements, major project requirements, and scheduled industrial maintenance work could only add to these challenges.
The GTA also is forecasted to add 5,700 workers in 2021 to keep up with its regional demands. BuildForce anticipates the increase will be created by a projected recovery in those smaller industrial and commercial projects that were sidelined in 2020, as well as demand from existing major projects including the Eglinton, Hurontario, and Finch transit projects, and ongoing work at the Ontario Power Generation Darlington nuclear refurbishment project.
Eastern Ontario, meanwhile, enjoyed a strong construction market in 2020. BuildForce expects activity to accelerate in Ottawa in particular in 2021 due to the second phase of the light rail transit project, the redevelopment of Parliament Hill’s Centre Block, and the refurbishment and construction of several other federal buildings. New hospital projects in Ottawa and Kingston will also boost the requirement for an additional 3,400 non-residential workers by 2024 – a 14% rise over 2020 levels.
In Northern Ontario, major mining and utility project demands and a moderate increase in the residential sector will drive construction employment to a peak in 2023. Finally, in Central Ontario, growth in residential investment is expected to resume through to 2024, while non- residential construction is expected to rise modestly.
Help wanted: 116,000 workers
In all, BuildForce forecasts a need for Ontario to hire, train and retain more than 116,000 additional workers to keep up with demand and replace retirees through 2030.
Demand from new projects is projected to increase construction employment by 9 percent—or 35,180 workers—by 2026 before slowing slightly in the later forecast years. By the end of the decade, employment is expected to have increased by 23,500 workers, or 6 percent, over 2020 levels.
That figure is dwarfed by the number of workers poised to retire through 2030. BuildForce’s forecast predicts that as many as 92,500 workers will leave the industry workforce by the end of this decade. That figure is the equivalent of about one-fifth of the 2020 workforce.
Although BuildForce expects a good number of those retirees—84,800—to be replaced by the province’s apprenticeship system, the industry will be left with a gap of some 31,400 workers that will need to be recruited from outside the province and from traditionally under-represented groups.
Those trades that could be in shortest supply include bricklayers, glaziers, industrial electricians and welders. What’s more, says BuildForce, it’s not yet clear how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect apprenticeship registration and completion rates.