I am a geologist in Canada. I work in the Ni, Cu industry, but...

I am a geologist in Canada. I work in the Ni, Cu industry, but most of my friends are in gold at the moment. I can tell the market is picking up because of a few things - one is when you go to the big conferences over here (AME Roundup in Vancouver or PDAC in Toronto) the mood is good. There are free drinks and the ocmpanies are actually inviting students into the events because they are looking for people. In bad times, you require invitations to get into everything and the mood is dark with all the students asking you for jobs. I didn't get asked once for a job and I was actually trying to find someone and didn't succeed until after the conferences lol.
The second thing is 'are any of my friends looking for work?' and they aren't. Instead I am getting requests from friends asking if I know any geo's looking for jobs.
Third is availability of drills. When I want to bring another drill on, the companies say things like 'we have to refab one, or build one from scratch'. Two years ago, they could have brought one to site in a day.
I hope I quoted this properly and I don't mess up the formatting lol.