Moncton — Southeastern New Brunswick, while boasting a large number of available jobs, is suffering from a shortage of doormats, says John Wishart, CEO of the Moncton Chamber of Commerce.
“There’s simply no way to fill these low-pay, dead-end jobs, when people don’t seem to want to be taken advantage of full-time while also working part-time to pay for rent and groceries,” said Wishart.
The Chamber surveyed members, and found that, regardless of the industry — be it healthcare, transportation, construction, retail, tourism or finance — the biggest struggle for corporations is finding people who have no self-worth and want to be ground to a fine pulp by incompetent middle managers making five times their salaries.
“It simply doesn’t make sense,” said Wishart. “We have these booming businesses making record profits, and yet, no one wants to step in and be exploited by them for their remaining days on this earth. What’s it going to take? Short of paying them adequately, of course.”
Another major issue in New Brunswick is the housing shortage. With nowhere to live, it’s going to be even harder to recruit people to the Poverty Province. And even once prospective hires have secured a place to sleep at night, there’s still the problem of getting a company to respond to their applications.
“I graduated with a business degree,” said Nathan Savoy of Riverview, “and I’ve applied for literally hundreds of these so-called plentiful jobs. I’m living at my parents’ place. I got no response. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong.”
Savoy showed his resume to Wishart, who chuckled, before pointing to the obvious error on the CV.
“Well there’s your problem,” he said, circling the “salary expectations” heading, that outlined Savoy’s hoped-for salary of $60K a year.
“You need to start at around $30K a year, and maybe if you work hard you can one day get to $40,000 or even $50,000. You’re scaring off these corporations with these crazy numbers.”
At press time, Wishart said the Chamber’s next step will be to hire a firm from Toronto to look into the problem of finding skilled workers.