Korean Job Discussion Forums

[sistersarah]

hey everyone,
i think i'll be making the big move back to canada in the next 1- 1 1/2 years (after about 5 years here) with my korean husband. we have a lot of decisions to make.

people tell me alberta's the place to be for jobs now because of the oil fields. i'm from ontario and definitely don't want to head back there, so i was wondering if there's anyone here who ever lived in alberta. what's life in alberta like? which do you prefer, calgary or edmonton? i know there's a fairly large asian community. i was only there for a week, so i don't know much.

thanks in advance!

[Grotto]

I prefer Edmonton over Calgary...more things to do, more festivals, better sports teams city is more picturesque. Huge asian community in Edmonton as well.

Calgary is closer to the mountains.

Tons of jobs available right now....if you have any trade, electrician, welder, Class 1 driver etc you can make a ton of money!(buddy of mine is working as an electrician and pulling in 75$ an hour, working 60 hours weeks, with overtime he is raking it in!)

[sistersarah]

yeah, my cousins say the same thing about edmonton. but the quick access to the mountains is quite a selling point for calgary!

geez, i wish my husband knew a trade. instead, he's in international trade.

[RACETRAITOR]

Edmonton has a lot more going for it culture-wise, but Calgary has a better public transport system, and it's only half an hour or so from Banff.

Edmonton's better if you're up for labour jobs. Calgary is a better place if you want a professional job. If you're just there to work and don't care about anything other than the money and the two of you, Fort MacMurray offers the best salaries for temporary/seasonal/etc work, but it's a hellhole.

[Captain Corea]

I dissagree with Grotto but agree with Racetraitor.

Calgary is white collar while Ed is blue.


As for Asian community, Calgary is quite diverse. I live there for 25 years and could give lots of examples of it. The Vietnamese and Chinese communities are well organized.


Oh, and Edmonton smells funny.
(seriously, the downtown there has some type of odd odour)

[RACETRAITOR]

[Doogie]

Personally, I prefer Calgary. I agree with you that the location is a huge selling point. You're definitely doing the right thing going to Alberta. If and when I go back to Canada, I'll move to Alberta. Previously, I lived most of my life in Ontario or Quebec. I have, however, been to both Calgary and Edmonton dozens of times on business. Alberta has lots of employment opportunities and no Provincial Sales Tax. Also, the personal income taxes are the lowest in the country. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are all money pits. Between high taxes and a high cost of living, it's just too hard to save much money in those cities.

[periwinkle]

There was a segment on 20/20 that aired a couple of weeks ago profiling an oil field in Alberta. They need people so badly that they are flying people in every day from other locations. The people working at the field are making fat, fat cash. Seems like brutal work, though- being manual labor. If he's desperate for work, they can always use people at that oil field.

[sistersarah]

i've been looking at alberta job sites and man, there are a lot of opportunities in the trades! if i could turn back the clocks i woulda went through to be an electrician or something! why was there so much stigma attached to the trades back in high school anyway?

[RACETRAITOR]

[Grotto]

Its funny. I have a buddy who is driving truck and pulling in 88,000$ a year on average. The electrician, well over 200,000$. Welders are pulling in about 100,000$

My teaching salary 54,000$

[blaseblasphemener]

[VanIslander]

Grotto, the trades you mention only need a year or two training.
If you want money so much, go to a community college or technical institute and do it! .... yeah, i thought so... on second thought, you don't want that kind of job, so crack a smile eh and can the envy... lousy jobs in lousy locales tend to pay more... tons of service jobs in Vancouver, but they won't pay more than the rent.



I recall my father pointing at the son of a co-worker of his, a guy who re-trained to get money as a pipefitting welder, or some special trade like that, and the guy was raking in the cash on six-month distant crap condition jobs up north, driving a fancy sports car when he came down, real raking it in,... and my father said "you should get a job like that", as apparently my graduate degree program in philosophy was something less than doing nothing in his eyes,... then a few years later I heard the dutiful welder-son committed suicide. I didn't have the spite to throw it in my dad's face, as I was a journalist by that time, an editor even, respected in the community with a real job, no longer a "writer" or "university student" or whatever other label his blue-collar mind could rap around (my father was a trained engineer from Hungary whose papers and entire education and ability wasn't recognized in Canada, and so he became a mechanic and millwright, the sort of guy who could fix and manufacture anything, work with your hands and your brains he'd say.

If working with your hands and the trades appeals to you or gives you some intrinsic satisfaction, then do it. But money is in itself a motivator that evaporates fast.

I worked at a newspaper in Northern Alberta for three months before hightailing it back to the coast where I belonged, going from section editor to beat reporter, cutting my pay in half.

Alberta is also where I did my undergrad, and nowhere I'd like to live long term.

Remember: you only need ONE (or two) jobs, so the whole "there are plenty of jobs" here or there is beside the point to anyone but the most desperate. If you have enough time, do your research and make the contacts, and get a job in the part of the country you want to live in, especially if you're looking at settling down.

[VanIslander]

[mithridates]

I think Lethbridge is the sunniest in Alberta, and Osoyoos in BC. Much smaller populations though.