Labour force is operating at two speeds

It seems increasinglyas if the job market has divided in two. There is the group of people that everybodywants, and those that nobody wants.

New numbers out ofStatistics Canada on Friday showed the economy added a healthy 59,000 jobs in May, but the long-term trend both in Canada and the U.S. is still one of sluggish economic growth, major layoffs including Target Canada and Future Shop, plus the oil downturn.

All those factors add up to mean that more often than not,jobs can be in short supply in North America.

• Canada lost 20,000 jobs in April
• Canada's GDP shrank at 0.6% pace in 1st quarter

But a story out of the United States this week opened a window on a completely different world of employment. It involved the ride-sharingcompany Uber and the robotics department at Pittsburgh's Carnegie MellonUniversity.

Uber is not just anxious to replace taxi drivers. It wants to replace human drivers altogether.

To that end it swept in and poached 40 of the keystaff atthe Carnegie MellonNational Robotics Engineering Centre. Theuniversity is crying foul, saying Uber took advantage of a co-operation agreement to gut its program.

But for the scientistshired away to work in Uber'sownPittsburgh robotics centre, it was a simple matter of accepting a better offer.

"For those people, this is a wonderful opportunity," Uber's robotic car research boss John Bares said at aPittsburgh conference this week. "A lot of people moved out to pursue a vision that, quite frankly, is hugely important to each and every one of them."

A subtle art

This is an extreme case, but it is an example of a much wider phenomenon. While many people go begging for work, in other fields there are never enough. In such a climate, keeping employees with specialized skills in high-demand areas is a subtle art thatcan be crucial to a company's success.

In the technology sector even junioremployees are required to sign non-compete agreements, meaning that when they leavethey cannot work for another company in the same field for a period, usually betweensix months andtwo years.

Lawmakers in the U.S. are trying to change those rules, saying they are being abused to keeplower wage employees from changing jobs.

For higher level employees in the private sectornon-competes are commonplace. The lack of such agreements in a university settingmay have been what made Carnegie Mellon a target.

Hiring the bright sparks

One of Canada'sleaders in the field of robots, Waterloo-basedClearpathRobotics, was formed by four University of Waterloo graduates. The firm isconsideredan innovation leader, attracting venture capital funding andhiring bright sparks from U of W's computer and engineering programs.

• ClearpathRobotics raises $14 million in venture capital

Usually forthcoming, no one fromClearpath would even discuss the issue on the record.But University of Waterloo labour economist Larry Smith, who teaches some the brightest students emerging from Waterloo,describes a cutthroat market in high demand professions.

Smith, who isfamous for his TEDtalk that has accumulated nearly 4 million hits, provocativelytitled "Why you will fail to have a great career," is cynical about the current job market.

"Good jobs are now disappearing," he said in his quirky, contrarianpresentation."There aregreatjobs and great careers and then there are thehighworkload, high stress, blood sucking, soul destroying kinds of jobs, and practically nothing in between."

Regardingthe effortto keep high-demand employees on board, he also divides the world of work intwo. Employees with technical skills currently in short supply are "merely" bribed with high wagesand perkslikefree food and massages.

"But those are not the stars," said Smith in a telephone interview. "Those are people with a technical talent that is in short supply."

A sense of mission

Smith says money can influence the most brilliant people too, but he says that wears off quickly.

"If you asked me what would keep the most talented of UWstudents at their place of employment, the thing that would work best is a sense of mission," says Smith. "They want to help change the world."

And from his experiencethat doesn't mean just the big companies. Often, he says,a smaller company can have a bigger impact.

But those people who are so hot rightnow may not be hot forever.

Smith says the race to buildrobotic cars is at a crucial point. If Uber wins that race its business model, for which it raised so many billions of dollars, will be a success.

But if Google or someone else createsa functioning driverless car first, anyone, including the taxi companies that are Uber's chief competitors,can beat Uber at its own game. At that point the panic to hirerobotics engineers maybe over.

Smith remembers something similar happening when the internet was being expanded in the 1990s. At that time there was nothing better than being a communications engineer. But when that projectwas complete, the jobs went, too.

"They terminated all the communications engineers, and that was thousands of them, that couldn't find a job anyplace."