1. CFES Earth Sciences Employment Survey Response
Updated April 2008

2. 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.

3. 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

4. Age Distribution for All Sectors

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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.

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

9. Capital Spending ($ billions)

10. Percentage by Age Group