Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, honourable members, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.
I'm the executive director of the Electricity Sector Council, whose mission is to strengthen the ability of the Canadian electricity industry to meet current and future workforce needs for a highly skilled, safety-focused, diverse, and productive workforce. The ESC is one of the few industry organizations without an advocacy mandate, and our efforts to be inclusive and objective in serving the broader needs of the sector is considered to be one of our key strengths. We provide human resource and workplace development support to workers employed by the electricity and renewable energy industries, and related co-generation, energy efficiency, and manufacturing and service consulting industries.
The Electricity Sector Council has taken a leadership role in the development of strong, credible labour market research. An extremely high participation rate in our LMI data research lends weight and credibility to the data produced. Currently, the electricity sector employs over 108,000 people, the majority of them highly skilled workers. Our most recent labour market information research published this January reports that employers in the electricity sector will have to recruit over 45,000 new workers—almost 48% of the current workforce—by 2016. The report shows that baby boomers comprise 36% of the existing electricity sector workforce. By 2016, all but the youngest boomers will have reached age 58 and likely have the 30 years of experience needed to qualify for a full pension.
We do have a notably lower average age of retirement. It's 58 versus 61 for the overall economy, and 66% of staff do retire once they are eligible. In fact, 25.4% of current power system operators are expected to retire in 2016, and almost 20% of supervisors of electricians and electrical power line workers are expected to retire at the same time.
In addition to the need for replacement workers for pending retirements, new human capital is required to support the transformation of the system as new technologies are integrated into the grid. Advances in technology are also changing the skill profiles of employees.
The available workforce will not meet these labour requirements, and employers need to look for and attract new recruits. There needs to be an increasing focus on targeting under-represented groups such as immigrants, women, and aboriginal people. Francis referred to the massive infrastructure requirements of the industry. We cannot replace the main infrastructure for the system without making an equal investment in human resources. Human resource investment should be seen as equivalent to capital investment and not as a cost.
Thank you.