Nova Scotia / Lots of highly skilled workers needed

RORY WILLIAMS wasn’t sure what he wanted to do when he graduated from Dartmouth High School two years ago. So he did what many Nova Scotia kids do: he hit the road.

That was fortuitous. His epiphany came while he was working on a farm in Australia when he met a couple of Aussie welders who talked up what they did for a living.

“I’m just not the type to sit in an office all day,” says Williams, 20. “I’d much rather figure out how to fix something and get it working rather than draw up blueprints and get someone else to do it.”

Now he’s enrolled in the welding program at the Nova Scotia Community College. He’s not 100 per cent sure that he wants to pick up an acetylene torch for a living.

But if he does he could learn that he’s answered the riddle most 20-somethings growing up in Nova Scotia are asking themselves these days: if the jobs of yesterday are gone, where is the work of tomorrow?

That’s a complex question for a whole bunch of reasons, says David Chaundy, chief economist at the Atlantic Provinces Economics Council.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor 

via Wanted: Lots of highly skilled workers | The Chronicle Herald.