Despite short-term economic uncertainty, Newfoundland and Labrador industry group techNL is preparing for long-term growth in the sector and increasing demands on the labour force, CEO Florian Villaumé said in an interview last week.

The organization is focused on developing a labour force skilled at working with artificial intelligence, as well as filling a particular deficit the organization’s members have reported: available training and upskilling programs for technical sales.

“There’s a lot of training on sales, but some of the (techNL) members have really related that there’s not enough on how to sell a technical product,” said Villaumé. “So that training will really help employees be more efficient and bring more value to their existing company.”

TechNL’s upskilling program, Find Your Future in Tech, was announced in March, along with about $27 million of federal funding. Memorial University is also involved in the program, including streaming some of its graduating students to St, John's-based Keyin College for additional, job-specific training.

In parallel to the upskilling training, techNL is also aiming to address long-term, structural labour shortages in the sector via outreach programs targeted at youth, such as its High School Tech Immersion program, which places Grade 10, 11 and 12 students in business and technical roles at local companies.

“Today is really about preparing for the future and the growth of the sector. In 2020 the demand for talent was very high, and the last few years … so many factors have influenced the growth of the economy in general and therefore the growth of the tech sector.

“But there’s still growth happening … We also track, informally, the number of employees inside companies, and we see that growth is continuing.”

Villaumé added that one seldom-mentioned factor driving demand for tech workers is not just the growth of ICT companies, but also the increasing digitization of traditional industries like mining, energy and fisheries — a trend he said techNL is preparing to see accelerate in the future.

“And I would say I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about generative AI,” he added. “That’s going to create a lot of opportunity for efficiencies, so therefore also a lot of need to leverage that tool to stay competitive globally. And that’s going to require a labour force.”

In its Employment Outlook 2023 report, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said AI will reduce demand for some jobs, particularly low-skilled or repetitive jobs. But it is also creating an increased need for the skills needed to train AI — meaning both the technical aspects, like data analytics and programming, as well as whatever task the AI is meant to be learning. And once the AI is developed, workers across a range of historically non-technical occupations will also need to learn how to interact with it.

“In firms adopting AI, workers in several occupations will have to use and interact with AI. Most of these occupations are not new but, in some cases, the tasks involved, and the skills required to perform them, will change,” said the OECD. “This subsection discusses the skills required in these two types of jobs, and analyses commonalities and divergences.”