A scene from a car manufacturing industry in Canada
After five years of tumultuous job losses in the Canadian car industry, the green collar or clean industry jobs might come to save the day. Clean energy industries are seeing an unprecedented increase in the number people to employ to man various available posts. The demand coincided with the increased demand for electric cars by consumers.
Canada is one of the many countries that is being hit by the global financial crisis. Although the demand for green jobs is starting to grow exponentially, it still has not able to cope with the job losses suffered by the country for the past five years. The country’s second-biggest auto parts manufacturer, Linamar Corp, is set to hire around 1,300 people at its manufacturing center in Guelph, Ontario before the end of 2011. Linda Hasenfratz, the auto-industry’s CEO, stated that the demand for green jobs is catapulted by the many new contracts offered to the company for the manufacture of vehicle parts or components that are more fuel and energy-efficient.
The wave of jobs ordered by car companies only answers half of the total job losses incurred by the same industry for last year alone. In 2009, the Canadian automobile industry released more than 100,000 workers but was able to recuperate more than half of it again this year or around 60,000 to date. At least another 10,000 jobs are expected to be created and filled in the next two years.
Jobs in the green sector will focus more on the development of fuel-efficient cars and those that uses clean energy such as solar power. US and Canada have legislation that requires automobile makers to build cars that are not only lighter and safer, but are able to consume less energy, emit less greenhouse gases. The eco friendly manufacturing stardards are what are driving the better paying green jobs despite the economic crisis.
