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Posted Oct 11, 2017, 5:37 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: BC
Posts: 4,569
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Help Wanted: Employers struggle to fill food service, entry level jobs
Quote:
North Vancouver’s iconic Tomahawk Barbecue has closed for dinner four nights a week while owner Chuck Chamberlain tries to find kitchen help.
In three months since losing several longtime cooks, his ads have drawn just 12 applicants and plenty of no-shows. The two that showed up for their scheduled interview were hired on the spot.
One new hire was scheduled to start a week ago on Saturday morning, but hasn’t shown up yet.
“Most of my chefs had been here more than 30 years, so I didn’t know hiring would be such a problem,” said Chamberlain, who has employees commuting from as far way as Port Moody. “Well it’s become such a problem that we have to close at four o’clock Monday through Thursday.”
Chamberlain is hardly alone.
The Noodle House on Lonsdale Avenue in North Vancouver shut down permanently a few weeks ago due to a chronic shortage of staff and sporadic one-day restaurant closures are popping up all over the Metro Vancouver. In Vancouver, Aphroidite’s Organic Cafe has suspended all dinner service for the fall and winter due to a staff shortage.
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Much of the glamour attached to the industry by the rise of Food Network and celebrity chef worship has faded as young workers face the reality of working in a hot, busy kitchen.
“I’d love to be able to pay all my staff a $40,000 living wage, because we want them to be happy and stay,” said Belcham, who commutes from Maple Ridge. “It’s not an easy job and the shelf life of a line cook is maybe ten years and usually it’s only a couple of years. It’s a high pressure job and you don’t get paid anything.”
Long distance commuters appear loathe to spend hours on transit for a kitchen worker’s wage, which typically starts under $20 an hour. Even Tomahawk’s kitchen wages of $20-plus an hour don’t line up with the cost of housing or the hassle of a long commute, Chamberlain said.
A recent report from Padmapper pegged the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver at $2,020 a month. A B.C. worker paid $20 an hour takes home $2,798 a month, according to the EasyTax online calculator.
While there are pockets of Metro Vancouver with more affordable rents — mainly Langley, Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows and the Tri-Cities area — there are few if any vacancies close to Vancouver, according to a market report from Vancity. Rental vacancy rates in Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey and North Vancouver are under one per cent, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
The Vancity report notes that rents have increased at double the rate of wages since 2011.
Craigslist currently has 2,500 postings for jobs in Metro Vancouver in the food, beverage and hospitality category alone.
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It’s not just Metro Vancouver and the food services industry that’s struggling to find workers.
B.C. has the highest job vacancy rate in the country at 3.1 per cent — 56,000 unfilled jobs — according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business’ Help Wanted report issued in August.
Those numbers are consistent with Statistics Canada estimates that pegged B.C.’s job vacancies at 68,000 earlier this year, with 81 per cent of the increase over the past two years concentrated in the Lower Mainland.
Sectors with rising job vacancy rates include oil and gas, construction, transportation, and hospitality.
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The pain is being felt by businesses that rely on younger workers, who are not already established in the real estate market.
“For the last 18 months to two years, it’s been a growing challenge for companies to acquire talent at the rate they need it,” said Bill Tam, president and CEO of the B.C. Tech Association. “The pressure on salaries has escalated quite considerably in the Lower Mainland.”
The average salary across B.C. for all tech workers is $83,000, but in Metro Vancouver, tech firms pay a premium to entry level workers, between $70,000 and $85,000 a year.
“That’s a reflection of the pressures they face trying to fill their open positions.”
The B.C. Tech job board has between 1,200 to 1,500 jobs posted at any given moment.
Senior software developer and architect positions take the longest to fill and anyone coming to Vancouver from any market smaller than San Francisco, Boston or London will face some serious sticker shock when it comes to renting or buying a home.
“There is a real adjustment when you come from somewhere that doesn’t face the same cost of living reality that we do,” Tam said.
Tech firms are increasingly setting up shop in the suburbs, where their workers can afford to live, thus eliminating onerous commutes.
Virtual reality innovator Finger Food Studios has set up shop in Port Coquitlam, while Safe Software, FINCAD and a whole host of health tech companies are clustered in Surrey Central, Tam said.
“The link to SkyTrain and the opportunity for workers to live outside the city’s ultraexpensive core is a powerful draw.”
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