Unemployment in Canada: Why is it hard to find a job right now?

For every vacant job in Canada, there are 2.4 unemployed people.

That was the picture recorded from April to June in Canada, according to Statistics Canada’s second-quarter report on job vacancies.

Vacancies have steadily fallen since the glut of nearly one million open posts in 2022. At the time, one in three businesses had trouble hiring staff due to a labour shortage. Two in five had issues finding skilled staff, and one in four would have to fight to keep them.

The agency says available wages, which may have been lower than what prospective employees were willing to accept at the time, could have limited hiring. Some businesses also said they were weathering a spike in retirements among boomer-aged workers.

Since then, vacancies have dropped. Unemployment has gained steadily to 6.6 per cent from the 4.8 recorded in the summer of 2022. Last quarter, there were just 580,000 available jobs in Canada — a far cry from one million.

 The drop in vacancies can be attributed in large part to few openings for jobs requiring high school education or less, according to StatCan. There were 30 per cent fewer vacancies than last year in those fields, accounting for 70 per cent of the overall decline.

The trades, transport and equipment operators and related occupations saw the largest losses in vacancies over the last year. By the end of the second quarter, open jobs in those fields were 30 per cent fewer than the year before.

The deepest losses were among transport trucking jobs, construction helpers and labourers, material handlers, and residential commercial installers and servicers.

How did we get here? Low wages and ‘lousy’ jobs

“It’s very hard to find a job in Canada today,” said Jim Stanford, economist and director for the Centre for Future Work, a non-partisan policy think tank.

He called Canada’s job market “unacceptably weak,” arguing the government and the central bank overreacted to pandemic “shock.”

During the early pandemic years, Stanford recalled, the Canadian government largely halted immigration and the regular operations of several industries.

Vacancies skyrocketed once the government ended lockdowns and lifted restrictions, he said. However, Canada’s workforce changed.

“Canadians did not give up on work,” Stanford told CTVNews.ca. “When those jobs disappeared, they figured out what to do. … They went and got more training.”

And when the jobs reappeared, many expected better wages, he says.

Source: Statistics Canada

“Employers in those industries cried, saying people ‘don’t want to work,’” and demanded the government take measures to remedy the worker shortage, he continued. In response, the Liberal government eased rules on temporary foreign workers, among other measures.

The Temporary Foreign Workers Program allows businesses to hire foreign staff in the absence of Canadian labour.

Since then, the program has drawn the ire of international spectators. Notably, the United Nations called it a “breeding ground for contemporary slavery.” 

To remedy the influx of foreign workers, the Liberals have since announced cuts to the program. Stanford said the Bank of Canada should continue to lower interest rates to reduce costs on Canadians and ease the strains of post-pandemic economic recovery.

And if the government is capable of reducing unemployment and increasing job vacancies, “employers will cry again,” he said.

“Next time we hear that cry, we should ignore it.” 

With files from The Canadian Press