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EDMONTON - Once the golden goose of the Canadian economy, Alberta is now shedding jobs like feathers, but those on the front lines of niche industries say the work is still there.
In other words, give us your watchers of weight, your sewers of thread and keepers of bees.
Niche industries, according to government projections, are taking their place along with the high-profile staff-starved occupations - such as health care workers and school teachers - as homes for those looking to reinvent themselves in the new red-ink economy.
Albertans were hit last week with new Statistics Canada numbers that revealed the province lost 5,700 jobs in January and another 23,700 in February, most of them in the resource sector.
But Larry Rosen, chief executive of Canadian clothing giant Harry Rosen, says the work is still there for those nimble of fingers and keen of mind.
"We found in the last number of years there's been a shortage of good tailors right across the country," said Rosen in an interview from Toronto.
"To get new, younger tailors is not easy. We find there are a lot of people interested in becoming tailors but they don't have the skills. We have to train them."
The shortage of physicians and nurses, school teachers, police and firefighters is well documented in Alberta government labour force projections.
But there are also expected staff shortfalls over the next decade in professions running from the prosaic to the more exotic.
For example, demand is expected to outstrip supply for architects, dietitians, nutritionists, physical therapists, archivists, conservators and school counsellors. On the other side, Alberta is expected to have enough lawyers, judges, performing artists, casino operators, announcers, and logging machinery operators.
Part of the problem is Alberta's aging workforce. Last month, Alberta's Employment and Immigration Department reported that the number of workers aged 55 and older hit 14 per cent in 2007, up from 9.5 per cent a decade earlier.
By comparison, the percentage of workers under 35 just entering their prime working years fell two percentage points over a decade to land at 41 per cent in 2007. Almost half the farm workers in Alberta are 55 years and older while one in three tailors and dressmakers are in that cohort.
Rosen said the tailors, many from Europe, who came to Canada in the 1950s and '60s are retiring and leaving a gap.
He said they still recruit, mainly in countries like China and the Philippines, where there is a higher number of eager workers.
Phil Gold, co-owner of The Colony clothing shop in West Edmonton Mall for close to 40 years, said: "When my own people decide they're going to hang up the needle and thread we could suffer a problem.
"Then it's time for me to retire, because it's like trying to find a doctor today."
It's a generational gulf broadened by the technical revolution, he said.
"Where mom was a seamstress, the daughter is a computer programmer. She doesn't want to the do the menial end of it."
In the southern Alberta community of Cayley, Terry Greidanus said he is forever looking for more than a few good men and women to join his bee team.
"We're a niche industry. We're not like the cattle producers, the primary industry in the province. We're small but still we're important," said Greidanus, president of the Alberta beekeepers trade organization.
The problem, he said, is that beekeeping is seasonal.
"We can hire local - and I guess with this recession it's probably easier to hire local - but the problem is if you get somebody good, you have to lay them off after six months.
"And if you've got somebody from the oilfields making $35 an hour, they're not going to be looking for a beekeeping job. Their pay's going to be cut in half, so it's unlikely we'll get somebody like that."
Right now, he said, they're focusing on bringing in workers from Mexico, the Philippines and Nicaragua, but are always willing to train someone locally.
Beekeepers say it takes two years or more to train someone to look after the colonies unsupervised, making sure the queen is OK, that disease has not taken hold, and then drawing out the honey.
"There are all kinds of tricks that person needs to learn," said Greidanus. "But if that person is willing and reliable, you're going to spend time to train that person."
