Huron County's Economic Development Department is Urging Residents to Consider Working Where They Live

by Bob Montgomery

Huron County's Workforce Coordinator made a presentation to Bluewater council this week outlining some of the challenges in attracting and retaining a labour force in Huron.

Clara Leney says the two biggest barriers for people willing to consider taking a job in Huron County are the lack of available and affordable housing, and transportation. She says those will continue to be barriers for the foreseeable future. Leney also pointed out 28% of the eligible workforce in Huron, people over the age of fifteen, commute out of Huron County to go to work every day. They're targeting that particular group because they already have a job, they also obviously have transportation and they have a home in Huron County. They're hoping to encourage those people to come back to Huron County to work with their recent Drive Less, Live More, Work Local campaign.

“That campaign is driving traffic to our Huron specific job board, which has been created in partnership with Employment Service System Manager for Grey, Bruce, Huron, Perth and it's raising awareness that there are opportunities in the county to be filled. And that job board is jobsinhuron.ca.” Leney says they have two billboards contracted out. One is on Highway 4 in Exeter headed towards London and the other is on Highway 8 towards Kitchener just outside of Seaforth and that will be up by mid-May. The job boards provide information from over fifty different databases as well as all municipal job pages and it's updated hourly. Anyone who is looking for an employment opportunity in Huron County should be able to find it on that job board or they can find it on the Ontario's West Coast website.

Leney also points out if they were able to convince all of that 28% of Huron County residents who work out of town to come back to jobs in Huron County, they would still need more people to fill of the available jobs. She also notes that 36% of the population who could be working are not participating and she suspects some of those are people who lost their jobs because of COVID and haven't gone back yet. They are trying to find a way to encourage those people to come back.