Jeff Ritter has news for Saskatchewan's young and not-so-young people: This might be the golden age of the skilled trades.
Registration with the organization he heads, the Saskatchewan Apprenticeship and Trade Certification Commission, has gone from 6,779 in June 2007 to 9,724 last June 30 - an increase of 43.4 per cent.
Then, there's the prospect of long-term stability in the trades as the boomer generation of tradespeople starts to retire.
And there's a new attitude toward trades - one that they are, in his words, "no longer a consolation prize for those who didn't get into university - nothing could be further from the truth!"
Proof of the trades' new appeal is in the demographic fact that the average age of apprentices registered with the commission has fallen to 27 (from about 29) over the past few years.
That tells Ritter, who became the commission's CEO Sept. 1, that more young people are choosing the trades earlier than any other generation - on average, about 260 a month.
Apprenticeship is, as Ritter puts it, "the oldest system of training that there is". It goes back centuries and revolves around a young apprentice learning his (or, increasingly, her) craft from a master.
Ritter says it can be reduced to one simple phrase: "Learn as you earn".
Applied to modern Saskatchewan, this means about 85 per cent of an apprentice's learning is done on the job, with the remainder in intensive classroom work, usually at the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology, but also at the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technology, regional colleges or even major employers, like SaskPower and SED Systems, which train highly specialized trades like power lineman and electronics assembler. Apprenticeships also covers a huge range of trades ranging from carpentry and electrician to less numerous ones like water well driller and pork production technician.
(More information is at www.saskapprenticeship.ca.)
This underlines another point that Ritter, who came to his post from the provincial ministry of the economy, wants to make: That the economy and apprenticeships go together.
The trades build the province's economic infrastructure and a robust economy provides jobs for apprentices and journeypersons. The coming retirement of the boomer generation means there should be stable jobs even when/if there's a downturn.
Adding economic stability is the Red Seal program of certification "that guarantees them full mobility across Canada - and employers can have great confidence they're fully certified for their trade," he says.
At that, Ritter - the son of a railwayman and the brother of an electrician, incidentally - concedes the trades aren't for everybody. You need an aptitude for working with your hands, and must be ready to work out-of-doors or in other challenging conditions.
But consider the opportunities. As Ritter points out, you can (depending on your values) treat a job in the trades as a very good 8-5 job, as a cherished passion or as the springboard to starting your own business.
"Don't dismiss it out of hand because it can be really rewarding and enriching career," he says.
"Give it a chance."
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