Exploration Phase Companies Challenged by Labor Shortage
Although today’s mining sector may be overshadowed by technology, it also provides the resources that underpin our modern world.
The global race to secure critical minerals is accelerating, but the industry faces a fundamental challenge long before a mine is built finding the geologists to discover it.
In Canada, nearly one-third of geoscientists are already over age 50, and federal labor forecasts project 3,700 openings for geoscientists over the next decade, with 94 percent of these openings driven by retirements rather than industry growth.
As governments push to secure future supplies of copper, lithium and rare earths, many in the industry warn the exploration talent pipeline may be running just as thin as the mineral pipeline itself.
More recently, the promise of AI to fill the gaps hasn’t materialized, and while the technology has helped increase productivity in the field, it isn’t at a stage where it can replace the technical understanding of rock types and mineralization that a trained geologist has.
The challenge was among those addressed when the Exploration Panel met during the Rule Symposium in Boca Raton from July 6 to 10.
It starts with education
Although the topic of exploration is discussed at most mining conferences these days, the focus tends to drift toward the influence of government policy and the broader investment environment.
However, in Boca Raton, the panel turned its attention first to education, or rather how the system is failing to turn out the necessary professionals to drive the volume of exploration projects.
In his remarks, Novo Resources (TSX:NVO,OTCQB:NSRPF,OTCQB:NSRPF) CEO Quinton Hennigh spoke about the excitement in the 1980s that drove a lot of people toward the resource sector, and ultimately an influx of geologists. For 25 years, they were leading the discovery side of the industry, but he explained how a downturn in the 90s shifted interest away from mining.
“We do not have a lot of 50 year olds to go out and run this industry. Are we seeing people come in at the ground level? No, we’re not, at least not out of the traditional countries like the US, Canada and Australia,” Hennigh said.
What he has seen is more interest from Latin America, where younger generations are coming to Canada and the US to get an education.
“That’s where my hope is. That we can actually foster the next generation of mining professionals out of those countries,” he said.
The importance of a stream of new talent entering the industry was one echoed by Stephen Enders Professor Emeritus of Practice in Mining Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, but he sees some shifts on the horizon.
He noticed a period of about 10 years during which enrolment in geological science and engineering departments shrank by 50 percent, but more recently these numbers have begun to reverse. He’s attributed this rise to demand for electrification, AI, and data…
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