Finding the city's so-called "hidden unemployed" and getting them working is the main objective of a new task force established by London's mayor.
Ed Holder officially unveiled his London Jobs Now task force Friday at Diamond Aircraft, one of many local employers unable to fill vacant positions. The idea of establishing a task force was first announced by Holder during his State of the City address in January.
"Getting 13,000 more Londoners working would take London from the worst Ontario job city to average," said Holder. "We have lots of jobs, we have lots of job seekers, yet we are having a tough time putting the two together."
Holder cited figures from Statistics Canada that show 78,000 or 28 per cent of Londoners between the age of 25 and 64 are not employed. Of those, only 10,000, who are actively searching for work, are actually counted in the region's jobless rate, which currently sits at a low of five per cent.
"We want to keep the many traditional recruitment methods that are in place for the active job seekers," said Holder. "But we must find new ways to engage the thousands of Londoners who are not responding to those methods. The task force calls that group London's hidden unemployed."
According to Stats Can, the London region has more than 9,000 job openings.
"There is a job for virtually every Londoner who wants one," Holder stated while talking about those unfilled positions. "We envisage new communication programs to reach out to those who traditional methods are missing, new ways to help Londoners without a resume to create that history, and new training for job seekers who don't yet have a good job searching and interviewing skill set. We are going to be talking about those kinds of initiatives over the months ahead."
Holder is hopeful a large chunk of the available jobs in the city will be filled following a job fair slated for next Tuesday at the Western Fair Agriplex. More than 70 employers will be on hand, trying to fill more than 2,000 vacant jobs with varying skill level requirements.
To help draw job seekers to the fair, the task force has distributed roughly 50,000 invitations to area homes. Thousands of additional invitations will be sent through social media.
Among the companies that will be in attendance is Diamond Aircraft, which has 100 full-time positions that have been vacant for several weeks.
"There are a number of factors that are either leading people to not know we are hiring or they are not hearing our message through the traditional types of platforms," said Jeffrey Smallwood, manufacturing operations manager at Diamond Aircraft. "We also have a little bit of a transit issue in London where we can't get people to the places they need to be at the times they need to be. Like any manufacturing facility, we operate in very extended hours and unique times and we need people who can get to work in those hours."
Smallwood also note heightened competition between employers to attract new employees as a result of all of the thousands of job openings in the city.
Of the dozens of openings at the east-end company, Smallwood said 70 of them can be filled by anyone.
"These are not jobs that require specialized university education, not jobs that require specialized licences. These are manufacturing jobs. People will be hired and we will train them," said Smallwood.
The Jobs Now task force is made up of representatives from city hall, the London Economic Development Corporation, the London Chamber of Commerce, Western University, Fanshawe College, London Region Manufacturing Council, and Knighthunter. They have been meeting twice a month to come up with new ways to engage job seekers and track employers with job openings.
