CFES Earth Sciences Employment Survey Response Updated April 2008

Number of Responding Organizations and Geo-science Staff/Members Overall, the response we had to our survey was excellent when you consider we had over 3200 geo-scientists represented by 88 responding organizations. The estimated # of geo-scientists in Canada, I’ve heard is 15,000. I this is vaguely accurate, then this survey has tapped on 1/5 of them, which is an excellent rate. Having said that, there are definite gaps in our ability to interpret this data, which I’ll highlight as I go. For this slide, logarithmic depiction of: No. responding organizations, No. geo-scientists represented Because it is logarithmic, best to pay attention to the numbers, rather than the relative size of the pillars Strong response from Academic (probably have 30 universities), Government, Oil & Gas Weaker response from Environmental, Mining. Given how quickly the environmental arm of ES is growing, and how large mining already is, I’d prefer if our data was stronger here. ¹CCPG members reflect a total registered population. As some members register more than once, the total count may be overstated.

¹Source: Statistics Canada Age Groups by Sector CCPG included as thought to be a good representation of geoscientists in all sectors, so serves somewhat as a check. Interesting that 60+ category drops so much. Could be: Early retirement Natural Canadian demographics More study? Interesting that Environmental has so many young people. Makes one wonder how many of the new grads are steering in this direction and will not be interested in the other sectors. Interesting that oil and gas is so evenly represented. (New grads have been attracted to O&G, and O&G tend to hire BSc’s i.e. younger) The mining slope surprises me. Does it ring true? ¹Source: Statistics Canada

Age Distribution for All Sectors

Academic Source: CCCESD Number of BSc (>year 1), MSc and PhD program registrants in Canadian university earth science departments from 1975 to 2006 Number 5000 4000 BSc MSc PhD PhD GEOL+GEOPH MSc GEOL+GEOPH BSc GEOL+GEOPH 3000 2000 We have in excess of 30 post-secondary institutions that grant degrees in earth science related fields. The problem is that while we have seen an increase in undergrad in the past few years it has not kept up with demand. One thing to bear in mind. The last stats I saw had biology undergrads outnumbering geoscience by a factor of eight. I don’t have recent numbers, but I think it says volumes about the job we’re doing, because I will bet my house that there aren’t 8 times the jobs for someone with a biology undergrad! Interesting to note the upturn in registrants over the last 3 years. One would expect that those increases would start to show themselves in the # grads in a year or two. Some questions that arise when trying to interpret this data for our purposes are: How many of these registrants will graduate, or graduate in this field given the proclivity of students to change faculties early on. How many will graduate in 4 years vs 5, i.e. do we divide the # of registrants by 3 or more in determining how many will graduate. 1000 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 Year Source: CCCESD

Expected Net Change in 5 Years Respondents were asked what their anticipated growth would be over the next 5 years. By sector, and weighted by the number of people in each organization, these are their results. The “Weighted Average” of 9.3% is the average net change weighted by the number of individuals by sector represented in the survey. Mining surprises me again. The data was not distorted by the growth expectations of one large company, the plans for substantial growth was broadly held across organizations. In fact the average size of the responding companies was 19. It seems intuitive that small companies would more readily say they intended to grow by 100%, lets say, than large companies.

Education Requirements by Sector Its interesting to note the different educational requirements by sector. The Academic arena was not asked this question in the survey, so there are not in this chart. Further analysis needs to be done to see if forecasted grads will meet these expectations.

Temporary/Contract Geo-science Staff by Sector Note: Academic does not include technical staff

Capital Spending ($ billions)

Percentage by Age Group