Medium & Long Term Trends

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Over the next decade, the oil and gas industry will face a major challenge.  Many of the oil and gas industry's most experienced and skilled workers will begin to retire - at the same time the Canadian labour force is shrinking.

To examine how the industry's workforce will evolve over the next decade, the Petroleum HR Council developed and analyzed three scenarios based on different energy prices and corresponding industry activity levels. In each scenario, the industry will face a labour shortage in the next 10 years. "Where will we find enough workers?" is a question every energy company should be asking,

Even in the scenario where the industry's activity levels remain low, the petroleum industry will need to hire 39,000 workers, just to replace the number of people retiring.

If prices for oil and natural gas rise and stay high, the need for new workers is staggering. In this scenario, the industry will need over 130,000 new hires.

Managing the future labour shortage will require a combination of strategies, such as:

• Communicating the petroleum industry's labour requirements to key stakeholders, including governments and post-secondary and training institutions.
• Attracting new workers from diverse labour supply pools that may not have been utilized previously.
• Managing labour costs while addressing shortages.
• Improving collaboration efforts to address workforce solutions.
• Increasing productivity through employee retention, workforce training and development, innovation and technological advancement.

For more details on the industry's labour market:

• Short-term trends
• In-demand jobs