N.B. students eye job opportunities out west › Researcher says young people don’t see province as a place to stay CHRIS MORRIS LEGISLATURE BUREAU CHRIS MORRIS/LEGISLATURE BUREAU Courtney Thompson, a 22-year-old University of New Brunswick student, plans to eventually head west to work. FREDERICTON – University student Courtney Thompson loves the Mari-times and enjoys living in New Brunswick so much, she may retire here some day. But will she work here? Not likely, says the 22-year-old University of New Brunswick student. “No, I don’t expect to stay here after I finish my studies,” Thompson said in an interview on UNB’s Fredericton campus. “I mean, even getting a summer job is hard in Fredericton, and in the Mari-times. I can see moving to Ontario or somewhere like that for more job opportunities, even western Canada” Former Fredericton resident David Turbide, 23, who now lives in Montreal, still comes back to New Brunswick every year to visit friends from his high school days in the New Brunswick capital. But he says there are fewer friends in New Brunswick every year as more graduate from university, pack up and leave home for the bright lights and bigger paycheques of central and western Canada. “When I was at Fredericton High School, everyone I talked to said they wanted to get the hell out of New Brunswick” Turbide said in an interview.“My former girlfriend couldn’t wait to leave, and she’s now studying at a university in the United States. I think a lot of people feel there’s just not much opportunity here.” Like Thompson, Turbide sees New Brunswick as a great place to retire, not as a great place to work. “If you want to make a lot of money,no one sees New Brunswick as the place to be,”he said. Michael Haan, Canada research chair in population and social policy at UNB, says these stories are all too familiar. Whenever Haan speaks to high school groups,he often asks for a show of hands by those who plan to leave New Brunswick. Usually most of the hands in the class fly up. He says between 40 and 50 per cent of New Brunswick’s young people plan to leave the province to work elsewhere. And he thinks there’s more to the exodus than just wanting more job opportunities. “My hunch is that there is more going on”he said in an interview. “People have already made up their minds in high school that they are going to leave, and they haven’t even tried to attach themselves to the labour market yet.So they haven’t exhausted their local opportunities, they haven’t even entertained their local opportunities to some extent. What they have done is made up their minds, or been told by people who provide guidance to them that this is not a place to stay.” Haan said the provincial Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour is making the right move by sending employment officers into high schools to talk about job opportunities. “They are trying to divert the outward flow,” he said.“The fact of the matter is, if you are losing 40 to 50 per cent of your young people, who knows what is going to happen down the road?” Data from Statistics Canada suggests that New Brunswick has seen a reduction of over 50,000 young people from the province in the past 20 years.Close to 13,000 young people left last year alone. At the same time, the province’s population is greying at a rapid rate. Since 1990, New Brunswick has seen an increase of about 20,000 people per decade aged 65 and over. Population projections indicate that between now and 2030, New Brunswick will see a further growth of over 100,000 people in the senior age group. Haan says that, ironically, the growing senior population may be a way to keep young workers or lure them back home. “One of the upsides of having an aging population is they require a lot of care,” he said.“There are job opportunities in taking care of an older population” Thompson is finishing up a science degree in environmental management at UNB and now is planning on entering the nursing program. She feels there are better job prospects in nursing, a field that has always interested her. But she says her desire to leave the Maritimes is about more than just getting a job – she wants to live in a different place and try a new lifestyle in a larger city away from the down-home, laid-back life of the Maritimes. “I definitely think a big part of wanting to leave New Brunswick is just trying something new,”she said. “For me, whenever I think about moving to a place like B.C., mostly it’s for the different experience. I know it would probably be about the job, but I really want to experience something else as well” Like so many Maritimers, Thompson is sure that whatever happens in her future, she will return home at some point. “I love the Maritimes,” she said. “I would always come back here. It’s my home.I want to try different things while I’m young,but I know I will want to come back,maybe to retire.I have a connection to the Maritimes that I don’t think I will ever lose.”
Posted on: Sat, 04 Jan 2014 20:14:41 +0000
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