Companion Reports Offer Analysis on Acute Mining Labour Market Tightness

Written by the Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MiHR)

The past few years have been marked by considerable disorder: the COVID-19 pandemic, the abrupt standstill of the global economy and its equally frantic recovery, the Russia-Ukraine War, countless supply-chain challenges, shortages of goods and services, and new fears of high inflation followed by stricter monetary policies from central banks around the world.

Since 2020, Canada’s mining industry has experienced rapid growth, driven primarily by higher metals and mineral prices. The upward momentum of mining development, together with the problems caused by the pandemic, has only placed additional pressures on the labour market and the industry’s ability to find qualified workers.

The Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MiHR) has released two companion research reportsthat offer an analysis of the acute mining labour market tightness that has emerged since the COVID-19 pandemic and how it affects the Canadian mining workforce.

The 2023 Canadian Mining Outlookreport examines the current labour market conditions of Canada’s mining industry and explores key areas where the sector may encounter labour market challenges over the next decade. It focuses on mining’s tight (and tightening) labour market; the reasons contributing to this tightness; and a labour market outlook and forecast.

The objective of this report is to detect and measure labour market tightness in Canada’s mining labour market. A tight labour market can result from a shortfall of available workers, a robust demand for workers or a combination of both factors. In either case, employers’ demand for workers outpaces supply, likely causing wages to rise and unemployment to fall as employers become more willing to pay for labour inputs.

In the short-term, several indicators point to challenging labour market conditions – coinciding with soaring commodity prices, increased capital investment, and rising exploration expenditures in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the long-term view, labour tightness issues have the potential to persist given unfavourable age demographics in the mining workforce, dwindling post-secondary enrolments in important mining-related programs, and a growing demand for the critical minerals needed to decarbonize the world’s energy infrastructure.

MiHR’s forecast, assuming an expansionary scenario for the industry, projects that new entries to the mining labour force will be insufficient to completely alleviate hiring pressures generated by new labour demand and exiting workers. Forecasted hiring gaps highlight the potential for escalating costs associated with recruiting new workers and replacing exiting workers. This commonly involves a combination of advertising, interviewing, selecting, onboarding, and training an individual to meet both company standards and regulatory requirements. The process can be time-consuming, especially in tight labour supply situations. Compounding this challenge is the limited ability of employers to recruit workers to remote locations that are far from the amenities regularly found in larger population centres.

Alongside these findings, the 2023 Canadian Mining Workplace Profilereport profiles Canada’s mining workforce to better understand its characteristics. The report highlights key trends in important topics such as equity and diversity, and it identifies where the workforce could be vulnerable to shifting trends in technology and labour demand.

The mining industry relies on a diverse workforce to extract and process the valuable minerals that are essential to modern life. As methods of mineral extraction become progressively more advanced, the educational requirements of the workforce need to evolve to include a greater share of workers with post-secondary training. However, as the report points out, the three most mining-centric engineering programs (i.e., Mining, Metallurgical and Geological engineering) also have the smallest enrolment numbers.

Moreover, mining has struggled to diversify its demographics and leverage the full potential of its labour pool. At roughly half of Canada’s overall workforce, women represent a sizable group with the potential to answer talent shortages. Yet from 2020 to 2022, women made up only 16 per cent of the mining workforce. Immigrant workers also present a significant opportunity for the mining industry to expand its sources of labour supply. In 2022, immigrants represented roughly 30 per cent Canada’s overall workforce, but only 10 per cent of the mining workforce. On the other hand, from 2007 to 2022 Indigenous representation has nearly tripled, reaching a high of 12 per cent and pointing to a favourable trend for Indigenous employment outcomes in the mining sector.

Developed in pursuit of MiHR’s vision to build an inclusive, skilled, and sustainable Canadian mining workforce, these two research reports complement each other by examining the ongoing labour market tightness and the trends that point to potential labour shortages and other human resources issues. The insights provided in these reports are meant to help guide industry stakeholders as they navigate labour supply and demand challenges.

MiHR has also released an infographic and video that summarize the findings of both research reports and will be delivering webinars in the near future for stakeholders to gain further labour market information.