In an effort to address the local labour shortage, the Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce did some hiring.

Last month, Judy Corley began her work for the chamber looking at everything from what other regions are doing to address their labour shortages to ideas local businesses have produced to find and keep their employees.

All of that information will then go into a labour market plan the chamber will produce.

'We've got to catch up,' chamber president Rick Karp said in an interview last week.

Most jurisdictions across the country have come up with labour market plans to address the labour shortages being faced as the baby boomer generation retires.

In January, with $85,000 from the territorial Department of Economic Development and $35,000 from Service Canada in addition to the $13,000 the chamber will spend in-kind, Corley began work on the study. It will be the first part of coming up with the long-term plan. The chamber has been planning for the study over the past year.

'We're really committed to this,' Karp said.

It's expected the study will be finished by the end of March, making it available to the public by mid-April at the latest, Karp said.

The report will take in information from other organizations, regions and local employers on the labour market.

'This is not a short-term problem,' Karp said, pointing out that millions of baby boomers are retiring every year throughout North America.

Those boomers are among the most educated people with more disposable income than retirees have had in the past. That means their former jobs have to be filled and services have to be available to them.

Locally, Karp pointed out, the Yukon had a 2.5-per-cent unemployment rate in December.

'We've got a serious situation,' he said.

It's important there's a plan in place to deal with all the help-wanted situations, rather than experiencing what Fort McMurray, Alta. has seen. There, a town with infrastructure built for a population of 35,000 saw a jump to 80,000 people in the community due to the development of the province's oil sands, Karp suggested.

The study will also examine the depth of the problem in individual sectors from the service industry to mining.

It's already been interesting to hear what employers are coming up with to help alleviate the problem, he added.

'There's a lot of great ideas out there,' Karp said. He pointed to one concept around a co-operative daycare which would feature extended hours for working parents. Others have brought in foreign workers to help address the shortage.

Another local issue businesses have to deal with is transportation in a city where buses stop running in the early evening and don't run at all on Sundays.

And for most businesses, retaining employees has become a significant consideration in a labour market where employees can easily move from job to job.

'The old empire approach doesn't work anymore,' Karp said.

As the chamber continues with its study, it's also encouraging all businesses in the territory to take part in the Yukon Bureau of Statistics survey being done over the next several months.

With funding from the federal Department of Indian Affairs, the bureau began contacting every business in the territory for the survey focused on the labour market.

Along with its own study, the chamber is expecting to use the survey for part of its plan.

'It's an excellent, excellent survey,' Karp said in encouraging business owners to be part of the undertaking.

While the chamber's study has a deadline of late March, just how long the plan will take to complete will depend on what comes out of the study. No deadline has been set for that.