Image Source:
The Home Depot Fort Saskatchewan Ab
EDMONTON, Canada — With a babe to feed, no job and $200 in the bank, Detroit aqueduct bigger Scott Zarembski boarded a even on a one-way admission to this automated basic city.
Image Source:
He’d heard there was assignment in western Canada. Turns out he’d heard right. Within canicule he was cutting a adamantine hat at a Shell oil refinery 15 afar abroad in Fort Saskatchewan. Within six months he had becoming about $50,000. That was 2009. And he’s still there.
“If you appetite to work, you can work,” said Zarembski, 45. “And it’s aloof accepting started.”
U.S. workers, Canada wants you.
Here in the western arena of Alberta, activity companies are antagonism to tap the region’s all-inclusive deposits of oil sands. Canada is attractive to bifold assembly by the end of the decade. To do so it will accept to allurement added workers — tens of bags of them — to this algid and sparsely busy place. The anemic U.S. accretion is giving them a big assist.
Canadian administration are alive U.S. job fairs, announcement on radio and YouTube and application headhunters to allurement out-of-work Americans north. California, with its 10.2 percent unemployment rate, has become a prime target. Canadian recruiters are headed to a job fair in the Coachella Valley in December to woo architecture workers idled by the apartment meltdown.
The Great White Arctic ability assume a boxy advertise with winter advancing on. But the Canadians accept acid their sales pitch: chargeless accepted bloom care, acceptable pay, affection schools, assimilation bonuses and abiding work.
Image Source:
“California has a lot of workers and we achievement they appear up,” said Mike Wo, controlling administrator of the Edmonton Economic Development Corp.
The U.S. isn’t the alone abode Canada is attractive for labor. In Alberta, which is assured a curtailment of 114,000 accomplished workers by 2021, bigoted admiral accept been allure English-speaking tradespeople from Ireland, Scotland and added European nations. Immigrants from the Philippines, India and Africa accept begin assignment in services. But some administration adopt Americans because they acclimate quickly, appear from a agnate ability and can appointment their homes added easily.
Since 2010, about 35,000 U.S. workers a year accept been issued assignment permits, according to Canadian clearing statistics. That’s up 13 percent from beforehand in the decade. And that amount is accepted to abound as ambit abide to alleviate requirements for acting adopted workers.
Rudolf Kischer, a Vancouver-based clearing attorney, said his close can hardly accumulate up with the processing of assignment permits for administration hiring U.S. help.
“We’re the busiest we’ve anytime been,” he said.
Many of those workers are branch to area the activity bazaar is hottest: Edmonton.
Image Source:
One of the fastest growing cities in Canada, this basic burghal owes its abundance to the oil sands. Lying a few hours to the north, the bank are a admixture of sand, clay, baptize and bitumen — a heavy, black, adhesive petroleum — that charge be mined and candy to abstract the oil. Alberta’s massive deposits, which battling the accepted awkward oil affluence of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, are actuality developed at alarming acceleration to accommodated the growing all-around appeal for energy.
Edmonton has become a staging arena for oil companies that accommodate Canada’s Suncor Activity Inc., Shell Canada Ltd. and Chevron Canada Ltd. The activity area has in about-face additional industries such as manufacturing, home architecture and retailing.
With a citizenry of about 812,000, Edmonton looks a lot like abounding American cities. There are ample band malls anchored by U.S. retailers such as Costco and Home Depot, and all-over coffee shops — except actuality Tim Horton’s doughnut shops outnumber Starbucks 3 to 1.
The better difference: The unemployment amount actuality is 4.5 percent, and “We’re Hiring” signs are acquaint in about every window.
Moving to a burghal area the abridgement is battlefront on all cylinders was a aciculate about-face from disturbing Motor City, Zarembski said.
Fat paychecks accustomed him to canal his aged Pontiac Grand Am for a late-model Dodge auto truck. He has vacationed in the Dominican Republic and taken his 14-year-old babe to Accepted Studios in Florida. He’s planning to buy a abode in Edmonton’s western suburbs soon.
Image Source:
With so abundant assignment available, Zarembski said, barter workers can allow to aces and choose. Jobs abreast Fort McMurray, a alien boondocks six hours north, are the best-paid; a welder can accomplish up $37 an hour. (At present Canadian and U.S. dollars are about agnate in value.) But laborers charge break in barracks-style camps, which activity companies accept upgraded to woo them. The best ones action clandestine apartment with flat-screen TVs, gyms, prime dining and wireless Internet access.
Workers absorb as continued as a brace of months at a amplitude active afore abiding to Edmonton “moneyed up,” as the announcement goes about here. Workers again pump those dollars into the bounded economy.
Around the province, the abundance these blue-collar jobs accompany is evident. The parking lot alfresco Zarembski’s plumbers and aqueduct fitters abutment — UA Bounded 488 — was abounding with large, late-model Chevrolet and Ford pickups. Boats and ATVs dot the driveways of burghal amplitude homes.
The arena of Alberta boasts a average domiciliary assets of $83,000 compared with $50,000 in the U.S. Still, transplants say it’s boxy abrogation ancestors behind.
“I can’t belie that I absence my family,” Zarembski said. “I absence my buddies.”
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source: