There are hot careers in this cold economy

When Vancouver Community College student Mary Forbes rescued a motorcycle and got it running at age 12 in her hometown of Williams Lake, it sent a signal that she was comfortable working around machinery.

“From there it was snowmobiles and more snowmobiles and lawn mowers and any car that needs rescuing and looks sad in the trees,” Forbes told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview from the VCC shop. “I love the potential. I don’t want to see a new car. New cars are great, but there are tons of them. I want the old car—the one that’s waiting to be rescued—to go out and find its new life and be loved again.”

However, Forbes said she suppressed the early passions for a time and instead opted for an archaeology degree at Simon Fraser University, graduating there in 2001. Now, at 29 years of age, the East Vancouver resident is back with machinery at VCC. The economy is in a slowdown, but an exuberant Forbes is happier than ever to be ditching academia in favour of a 10-month program in automotive collision repair and another in refinishing.

“Academia’s great, but I feel like, well, our parents were of the generation where they came out of trades and said, ”˜Trades is a dead-end job, grunt work and blue collar, and I want my child to go forth and be affluent and be academic and be impressive,’” she said. “But now there is such a flood of academics that our trades are suffering.”

Forbes said she already has work lined up in one of the shops in Williams Lake, where she plans to return when she is done at VCC.

“There is a work-study component that goes with both the courses I’ve taken—both collision and refinishing—here at VCC,” Forbes added. “And after the collision-work study, the [people at the] position I was at said, ”˜If you are ever open, you let us know, because we’ve got room.’ They knew I was coming back to school. I am from Williams Lake, and when I was back there I spoke to the whole five shops in town, and all of them expressed interest in my return. One shop said that they are being headhunted from Vancouver, and this was at the beginning of the recession here in January.”

In all, 129,000 mostly full-time jobs were lost Canada-wide in January, according to the findings of a Statistics Canada labour-force survey reported on February 6.

“The only industry with notable gains was health care and social assistance, where employment increased by 31,000,” the report stated.

Brad Barber, communications director at Douglas College, confirmed to the Straight in a phone interview that “health care is huge”.

“Our nursing and psychiatric-nursing programs are very popular,” Barber said. “People in fields such as dental assisting and health-care support work also.”

The aging workforce and government funding are factors, Barber said.

“These are significant base-funded jobs,” he said. “So while sectors like health care may be tightening their belts, the demand for health care is getting stronger every day, and governments, I think, are recognizing that. As our population ages, issues such as eyesight become bigger issues. So fields such as optometry and our dispensing-optician program are having no trouble finding work for our grads.”

There are about 25 grads a year coming out of the dispensing program, Barber said, and all find work in the local area.

Gayleen Wren, cooperative-education department chair at Langara College, told the Straight that two areas come to mind as being hot in a cold economy: tech careers and government jobs.

“Gaming’s going down the toilet, but it’s a very big field, and there are lots of organizations which are still hiring,” Wren said. “To put everything in perspective, we’ve come off a boom economy.”¦Jobs are off from this time last year, but there are still lots of jobs.”

Wren attributes the growth in government-related employment to the “greying of government”.

“Federal government and provincial government are actively recruiting grads because the managers and the senior people are all getting to the point where they are going to retire in the next few years,” she added.

Meanwhile, Forbes is so happy in her new environs that she feels, well, like a kid again.

“When I speak to my peers in archaeology, they are all impressed,” she said. “They are all excited for me, because they are suffering and getting laid off, or they are working in horrible conditions. With this, you start with a smile and a good attitude, and you’re in.” -