At a time when Alberta’s economy is hurting, tourism in the Bow Valley is booming and there are hundreds of jobs to be had.
Many parts of the province are grappling with unemployment levels that haven’t been seen in two decades after large-scale layoffs from the downtown in the oil and gas industry, but local officials say Canmore, Banff and Lake Louise continue to defy the odds.
Anticipating a busy summer, they say many local employers, including hoteliers, restaurateurs and retailers, are already reaching out to hospitality schools and other parts of the province and country to recruit workers.
Michel Dufresne, director of the Bow Valley’s Job Resource Centre, said labour attraction has always been a challenge for local employers and this summer is setting up to be no exception.
“It’s business as usual in the Bow Valley in that employers are going to be hiring full staff,” he said. “That means we need to attract as many workers to Banff and Canmore as we did in other years, maybe more. There will be jobs here.”
Alberta’s current unemployment rate is 7.4 per cent and has exceeded predictions made by economists last year. According to Statistics Canada Alberta lost 19,600 jobs last year – the most since 1982.
Based on the near constant play of stories about the thousands of oil-industry-driven layoffs in Alberta, Dufresne said students and other potential workers are second-guessing their plans to come to the Bow Valley to work.
He said this comes at a time when near-record numbers of tourists are expected to visit the area, meaning finding much-needed workers to staff hotels, restaurants, retail stores and attractions is essential and perhaps more challenging than ever before.
“We know people who lose jobs in Red Deer, Airdrie or Fort McMurray are not going to flock to Banff to work in the hospitality sector, but there are some housekeepers in Fort McMurray who would take a job in housekeeping in Banff,” he said.
“But the storyline across the country is there are no jobs in Alberta, and we’re trying to send a different message, that in the case of Banff and Canmore, it’s mostly business as usual and we’re looking for as many staff as possible over the summer.”
Banff and Canmore’s tourism economy is booming.
In Banff National Park, Parks Canada estimates there will have been a 7.4 per cent increase in visitors to the park from April 1, 2015 to March 31, 2016, up to 3.8 million visitors compared to 3.6 million in 2014-15. The previous year saw a 10 per cent increase.
“Tourism is busy,” said Dufresne.
“What we’re hearing is the low Canadian dollar attracts Americans to Canada, and that people from Calgary and across Alberta and B.C. will travel to the U.S and abroad less, which increases stay-cations.”
Banff & Lake Louise Hospitality Association officials say the downturn in Alberta’s economy has increased the size of the regional labour pool.
Darren Reeder, the group’s executive director, said BLLHA has been more proactive than ever in trying to stabilize its labour force requirements through regional recruitment efforts.
“This is an imperative headed into the summer, as not only are our projected labour needs higher than one year ago, the number of temporary foreign workers permitted to work for an employer falls by 50 per cent as of July 1 under the new quota requirements,” he said.
“We’re projecting labour shortages again in our peak summer months with the positions of room attendants, line cooks, food and beverage servers and kitchen help/dishwashers being the hardest to fill positions.”
Reeder said several BLLHA members have made recruitment trips to various hospitality schools across Canada and within Alberta starting as early as October to begin preparing for the upcoming summer, noting BLLHA led a trip to Vancouver Island earlier this year.
He said the organization is kicking off a summer marketing campaign later this month.
“A number of members attended the Spring Job Fair held in Morley and the Banff & Lake Louise Hospitality Association is also registered for the Aboriginal spring job fair in Calgary this week,” he said.
“As an association, we have also been more active on social media informing people that there are definitely jobs available.”
According to the Bow Valley Job Resource Centre’s spring labour market review, the centre received 1,285 job orders from 297 Bow Valley employers for a total of 3,005 positions for the six-month period ending Jan. 31, 2016.
Demand was highest in the food and beverage sector, with 38 per cent of job advertisements fitting this category.
At the Job Resource Centre, 51 per cent of the jobs advertised in the six-month period ending in January 2016 included employee housing. A greater number of jobs included staff housing in Banff (57 per cent) than in Canmore (30 per cent).
Based on the Job Resource Centre job board, the average starting wage in the Bow Valley was $16.48 per hour, which is a 2.2 per cent increase over the same period in 2015.
– Rocky Mountain Outlook
