page 5'

to his field for'positions advertised. The list of factors affecting business activity in Canada is about endless, hinging not only on prayer and crossed fingers but on tariffs imposed by Britain as a member of the E.C.C. against Canada, on eventual ‘settling of currency exchange rates

y the Editor

' edicting the climate for jobs next y or for even a few months from ow calls for close attention to ozens of economic riddles, using he experts’ opinions, maybe a

stal ball and above all - your wn head.

rying to write about the employment ituation facing graduates next spring ithout saying anything negative or dis- ouraging is similar to the kind of assign- ents that have driven many public elations men to martini-soaked graves or o simpler forms of work such as nuclear hysics.

Right, I know and everybody knows with the possible exception of Finance inister Benson) that things ain’t too -_. and for the grads of ’72, at least not by he gloomy forecasts of the placement fficers of the land, or changing sets of tatistics issued by Canada Manpower and a host of other not-so-heavenly bodies. If rudeau was indeed actually gaining any ards on inflation, it appears that Nixon ept up from behind and blew the histle on Mr. Canuck’s ballgame, leaving import surcharge on the scrimage line. And just when every economist from J. Keynes to Toulouse Lautrec had been phoning his bank manager for the latest quote on German marks, in bounced the PM. with $80 million to cheer up all the secondary manufacturers of the plastic ric-a-brac that keeps people driving to work in the morning.

Keeping score on the changing mployment scene in Canada is like fore- casting the weather from an airplane: you ave to get down on the ground and watch what happens and when it DOES I ppen, you can believe it.

Throw open an arena to John Public 0 debate what should be done about mployment and you’d soon have a col- ection of riddles and befuddled, incom- lete, unfounded viewpoints to publish x more years of Ripleys-Believe-It-or-

This is the first of a continuing series of viewpoints from leading Placement officers at Canadian unr- Versities and community colleges, dined at giving CAMPUS readers some solid advice and ideas on how to prepare for finding jobs and gra- duating smoothly into a satisfying career area.

' This month, .Mark Gerber, the Canada Manpower Centre Student Placement Officer at Mohawk Col- lege of Applied Arts and Techno- 108Y, Hamilton, Ontario offers the first of many ideas he would think libout if he were a 1972 graduate.

by Mark Garber

If I were a 1972 graduate I’d be damned ‘ Worried! _

The job scene in Canada stinks. We have all read the newspapers and feature articles of MacLean’s and Time depicting

l ot. That’s the trouble with the subject:

everyone’s right to a point, wrong on several more and undecided about what on earth it is they’re trying to discuss. It’s

a subject without a title.

Put the blame on anyone? Well, you have a list of rogues to choose from, beginning possibly with mommies and daddies all over the place who thought a

split-level house and two or three split-level kids might be nice to have, but forgot to project population figures to the year 1971-2 to see that a relatively little country like Canada wouldn’t have enough businesses operating to provide work for their tots.

Then there’s bad old government that purposely created unemployment as an efficient, if somewhat inhuman, method of bringing down prices to the point where its supporters would be able to increase their bread consumption from two slices to four. This is called the‘ “spoils system”.

Next on the carpet is Trustbuster Teddy’s old sparring mate, Big Business which shrugs with an infuriating but logi- cal explanation about being unable to hire graduates until people start buying more bread. This you might call the “no blood from a stone” position.

Then there’s the warcry from the out- raged taxpayer who gasps at the sight of broadloomed school corridors and super- graphic-decor walls and couches, the voice that wants to throw the bums out because they’re not interested in jobs anyway, all they want is a free ride with chips ’n gravy along the way with maybe a teensy increase in the welfare allow- ance.

And they get madder when the stu- dents confound them with arguments about brutality in business, reasoning that they’re surely not expected to lend' their talents to companies thrashing out

pyjamas that burn children, cars that kill the rosebushes, and bureaucracies that steamroller initiative into laissez-faire indifference.

It’s thoughts like this that make it , doubtful anyone wants to hear, much less

‘ ' ' 'thout the sorry plight of gaduates w1 _ / jobs. It is a problem — and avery. serious problem. However, 1 beheve it is a problem that can be solved (and has

' 1, been solved) by gradua- demonstrative y . sun to think film

1972. V _

A- ’hintend to fill this column with piddlif-grhp about “The Little Graduate Who Though He Could”. Job-seekmg is no joke and neither you nor 1 have time

one. . .

forWlhitt I hope to convey to the worried graduating student of 1972 who is Willing .to get involved in an active Job Strategy Program are a few precepts from my experience in the placement. of college graduates that might enable him or her to steer between the puerility of PLASTICS and the ennui of WELFARE.

consider, positive facts about job availa- bility next May. When such information does. come to light, it tends to be quali- fied into submission anyway. For example, a quote from Manpower and Immigration’s “University Career Out- look 197071”: ‘

“It has been estimated that the popu- lation of Canada will reach 25,000,000 by 1980. The labor force will grow at an even faster rate because of the increase in the young adult population, immigration, and the larger number of women who

enter the labor market. Every year the.

number of professional and technical workers in the labour force increases and employment in this group may expand from 1,100,000 to 1,800,000 in the' 1970’s”.

Under these conditions, the book. states, there should be “a continued good. demand for professional and semi-profes- sional personnel in the 1970’s. However, the pressure of the young adult popula-‘ tion on the labor market will result in a highly competitive situation. A premium will be placed on the level of qualifica- tions and entrance standards may be raised.”

The university graduate “will be par- ticularly well situated to compete in this competitive labor market and, at the same time, to follow a career-which is consistent with the changing goals of our society”, the book adds, leaving trans- lation of such wool-lined phrases as “a continued good demand” and a career consistent with “the changing goals of our society” to suspend the reader for- ever in the twilight zone of the Land of

- Maybe.

In fact what each person is forced to do is use his own background in econo- mics and his ability to read, to decide for himself where employment will be in eight months — and get rolling on an aggressive campaign to telephone emplo- yers for interviews, ship out resumes and watch the newspapers and trade maga- zines associated with the industry closest

One of the real tragedies of the current academic scene is the entrapment of graduates in programs of studies that have no real exit into the world of work. Graduates /discover that the world of. higher learning and higher earning are not necessarily synonomous.

gont'd on page 8.

corporate liquidity , Canadian resources,

'around the world, on lifting of Nixon’s

wages and prices freeze and import sur- charge, on future labor contract negotia- tions in Canada, on exports to China, on on demand for on capital spending intentions of private and government sectors, on consumer buying and con- fidence, on bank savings, bank rates, on housing starts, tourism, grain production: on trade quotas with Japan and on the improvement in health of the country’s pale-faced neighbor. There is plenty of grim evidence to report, but good evidence too. On July ’16, the Globe & Mail reported increased gas sales expected- in ,1271 of, 1'0 percent lwhich 'Will'boost 'incentive- to' explore, imaking jobs for geologists etc. Steel com- panies were cautiously optimistic on May I l in the paper because of. lower cost imports, but gas and oil line construction lplus heavy industry buoyed up their spirits. . 5 Each province’s economic picture IS an amalgam of good and bad factors at any .time. New Brunswick for example, 30

percent below the national average econo- mically was reported in July to be gaining secondary wood-based industries and 'expected go-aheads- on multi-million dol- Zlar deep water port facilities. It noticed increased public spending on housing, higher investment capital outlays and an average industrial wage of more than $100. Yet population is migrating away, unemployment payments remained high, commercial investment slackened and so on. Oil and gas offshore production had Nova Scotia’s Premier Regan in tears of joy in July, mentioning reserves ten times. yeater than those in the Gulf of Mexico. Real estate firms in July reported a 20 percent upswing nationally in. sales, credited to more mortgage funds availa- ble. “Recovery of the economy, said real- tor A. Willoughby, Toronto “is just the expression of the attitudes of the man in the street.” -

One attitude changing for the best has been that of industry toward the com- munity college grad. In June, St. Lawrence College reported that 85 per- cent of its 249 grads had been placed, last year being 95 percent. Many students intended to go on for more schooling or travel Europe.

A report by the Ontario Council on Graduate Studies shows that only 15 of the 624 PhD graduates from all the :Ontario universities in the fall of 1969 ‘ and the spring of 1970 were unemployed.

These statistics, collected in October, November and December of 1970 show a. radically different employment picture and a much brighter one than had been indicated during the fall from" other sources

Most Canadian employers report same or slightly less recruiting activity this1 year. If you’re in certain fields such as hotel and restaurant institutional manage- ‘ment, accounting, geology, business administration, your chances for work fare well compared to the plight of the general B.A. graduate who stands to find most opportunity in sales, in training within firms, in fairly junior positions.

Sure it’s a tough deal getting the kind of work you want these days, but your ' chances are no worse than your pal’s. What you have to avoid is jumping into any old job that comes along because of the confusion and likelihood that you’ll want to chuck it in two months, stum- bling on to job number two and number three, thus alienating the more conser- vative, skeptical personnel officers of the land who will peg you as a “mover” or quitter. I

What next May’s conditions will be» like depends on dozens of current econo- mic problems, still being worked out internationally. All you can do is begin a consistent program of recruiting on your ' own behalf and count on poor prepara- tions by others to put you in‘the fore- front.