Fort McMurray Forum

Alberta industry needs to fill an estimated 9,500 jobs by 2015.

But a more recent report from the Petroleum Human Resources Council suggests the birth between demand and supply in provincial labour markets may be growing, despite economic turmoil in the United States the lowest gas prices in decades.

A recent poll of nearly 40 petroleum corporations, representing more than 60,000 employees shows more than 91 per cent are hiring, a 7 per cent spike from last year.

Council Executive Director and CEO, Cheryl Knight says inter-sector competition for employees is exasperated by workforce demographics.

"In the oil sands, as well as other parts of the industry is an aging workforce, there's third generation workers in oil sands today, a lot of people don't realize that, so we're getting older and as people retire we're not only losing individuals out of the workforce, we're losing people with skills that we really need today, and are very hard to replace," said Knight.

Knight adds that pipeline, oil sands and natural gas sectors are courting workers with similar skill sets.

"We're not only competing amongst ourselves for the same skills within the oil and gas industry, but we are also in an environment where mining and construction has the same sorts of demands, and with mining in particular they're coming at us hard, so it's a very competitive environment," said Knight.

This as the majority of respondents indicated that attraction and retention of workers in hard-to-recruit locations is their top workforce challenge.