Tuesday, October 31, 2006

'Thousands seek Alberta jobs at St. John's fair'

I don't have time to comment on this, but I wanted to share the most exciting news I've stumbled across in a while.

From the CBC:

Thousands of job seekers packed into a modest St. John's hotel Monday, overwhelming Alberta employers who had come east on a recruiting mission. Prospective employees lined up for hours outside the Capital hotel on Kenmount Road, with cars parked along the nearby Team Gushue Highway. Inside, employers said they were deluged with resumes.

"It's been like a zoo," said Dominic House, a recruiter with oil giant Syncrude, whose
perks included a $20,000 moving bonus to Fort McMurray and two months of free
housing.

"They're lined up all around the building and up on top of the hill. It's absolutely amazing."

Estimates of attendance ran as high as 5,000.


Now that's good news (with no subsidies required, I might add). I'm looking forward to seeing how this evolves.

2 comments:

happyjuggler0 said...

Hmmmmm. This sounds familiar somehow.

Although the scenario I remember involved needless government intervention. Oops, I ought to lose my libertarian decoder ring for that one.

true dough said...

Dang, Happjuggler0! Nothing slips by you. ;)

You were right. I was wrong. Apparently strong enough incentives exist. Still, it's difficult to imagine the government offering such huge incentives as the ones currently being offered by the firms. The incentives the government would have offered may well have been low, wasteful and less successful. Okay, I'll stop trying to win. But, Mr. Libertarian, I'm sure you agree that this really is a much nicer outcome.

I wonder if we've witnessed a prisoner's dilemma. Perhaps the large businesses were holding onto their bag of incentives to see what the government would do. Although it's been a long and painful process, the government did nothing. Now that other Albertan firms see the strategy of Syncrude et al, they have no choice but to drop their bait to entice new workers. Although, it seems like the major players took action in unison. Exciting stuff!