Posthaste: Canadians hunting for jobs fret as they realize they've lost the upper hand
Canadian employees, once calling the shots in a world of record high job vacancies, now believe the tables have turned and that employers have the upper hand when it comes to hiring, a new survey has found.
Fifty-seven per cent of people looking for work said they think it will be a slog to find a job over the next six months, according to a survey released earlier this week, conducted by the U.S. market research company Harris Poll for human resources firm Express Employment Professionals. The survey lifted the veil on the job search experience, and the rising number of hurdles Canadian workers perceive or are encountering along the way.
More job hunters now believe there are fewer opportunities overall — 38 per cent, up from 31 per cent last fall and spring.
Digging deeper, a declining number of job seekers believe opportunities exist in their field, with only 20 per cent saying that is the case, down from 27 per cent in the fall of 2023 and 33 per cent in the spring of that year.
Canada’s jobs market has changed on several fronts.
Employers indicated in the most recent Bank of Canada Business Outlook Survey (BOS) that worker shortages have significantly moderated, to that point that job vacancies have receded to pre-pandemic levels from record highs of more than one million in May 2022. In the BOS, 40 per cent of businesses said they did not plan to do any hiring over the next 12 months.
The unemployment rate, which dropped to a COVID-reopening low of 4.8 per cent in July 2022, held steady at 6.4 per cent in July from June. Economists pointed to many signs of stress in the labour market based on the latest report from Statistics Canada, including a declining jobs participation rate and a continued slide in the
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