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Here’s what’s really going on in Ontario’s job market

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The vast majority of workers in Ontario haven’t experienced anything quite like it their entire working lives: a labour market tilted in their favour.

Statistics show unemployment running as low as it’s ever been, record-high job vacancy numbers and unprecedented labour force participation rates.

The labour market is “the tightest it’s been in half a century, and it’s not unique to Ontario,” says economist Armine Yalnizyan. “It’s happening all through the global north, wherever there was a baby boom after the Second World War.”

“There’s a traffic jam of employers looking to hire,” says Brendon Bernard, senior economist at Indeed, a job-search website.

This article launches a year-long project by CBC Toronto called “Workers Wanted.” It will delve into what’s happening in the job market in the GTA and around the province, the impact on employers and employees, possible solutions to the labour crunch and how the changing workforce affects our daily lives. Do you have a story to tell? Get in touch via the callout at the bottom of this story.

This profound shift in the job market has implications for just about everybody, whether you’re an ordinary worker, an employer, a political leader, or someone waiting to get care in a hospital or service in a restaurant.

It could bring about significant changes in the world of work — from recruitment tactics to workplace culture to salaries — but that largely depends on how governments and employers respond.

The federal government is allowing certain employers, including hospitals and the food services industry, to fill up to 30 per cent of jobs with temporary foreign workers. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

Premier Doug Ford spoke of “endless employment opportunities” in Ontario during a news conference in Brampton last month.

“You could walk down every street in this province and find a job in every single sector. We need 380,000 people to fill the existing jobs that we have right now,” Ford said.

The most recent figures from Statistics Canada show 372,000 job vacancies in Ontario during the third quarter of 2022. That’s nearly double the average number of vacancies (195,000) reported during the three years leading up to 2020.

But how good are these jobs? For a fuller picture of what’s really going on in the labour market, take a deeper look into what Statistics Canada found about the current vacancies:

  • 60 per cent of the job vacancies in Ontario required no more than high school education, paying on average less than $20 an hour.
  • Nearly 200,000 jobs required less than one year of experience.
  • More than one-third of the job vacancies were in sales and service.

Still, the overall dynamics of the job market in the province differ substantially from how things were before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Politicians and business leaders sometimes describe what’s happening as a worker shortage, but that framing doesn’t sit well with some observers.

“I’m not sure that it’s so much a shortage of workers as a shortage of employers that are willing to pay the wages necessary to get people to work for them,” said Don Wright, former head of the public service in British Columbia, now a fellow with the Public Policy Forum think tank.

Bernard also pushes back against the use of the term “worker shortage,” saying it has negative connotations and lacks precision.

“I tend to focus more on the balance of strength and power in the labour market when it comes to job seekers versus employers,” Bernard said in an interview.

The way this balance of power has shifted should force employers to shift their mindset, particularly when it comes to compensation, says Yalnizyan, the Atkinson Foundation’s fellow on the future of work.

“They’ve had 40 years of labour surpluses and they still think workers are a dime a dozen,” Yalnizyan said in an interview.

Economist Armine Yalnizyan, the Atkinson Foundation’s fellow for the future of work, says the sectors with the greatest difficulty finding workers tend to be the ones with the poorest pay and working conditions. She says those employers need to rethink their approach to hiring. (Christian Patry/CBC)

“Businesses that are raising wages and improving working conditions, offering more flexibility in how people take time off or offering more benefits, those places are finding it much easier to fully staff their businesses.”

Not all employers are prepared to do that.

Making current staff work more

Even among Canadian businesses that considered labour force shortages to be an obstacle, less than two-thirds planned to offer current employees a wage increase, less than half planned to boost wages to lure new hires, and only one in five planned to enhance employee benefits, according to a Statistics Canada report last year.

So how do companies intend to deal with the labour crunch? That same report found that half of all businesses said they expected current management and staff to work more.

The federal government’s primary solution is to bring in more workers from outside the country.

The Trudeau government quietly launched its biggest-ever expansion of Canada’s temporary foreign worker (TFW) program last year.

The most recent figures from Statistics Canada show 372,000 job vacancies in Ontario, nearly double the average in the three years before the COVID-19 pandemic began. (Laura Meader/CBC)

The changes mean that temporary foreign workers can now make up 30 per cent of an employer’s workforce in certain sectors, including accommodation and food services, construction, some manufacturing industries, nursing homes and hospitals.

In all other sectors, employers can now hire up to 20 per cent of their staff from the TFW program, double the previous cap of 10 per cent.

Hiring more temporary foreign workers

Employers leapt at the opportunity.

Approvals to fill Ontario jobs with temporary foreign workers more than doubled in the July-September 2022 period compared with the same months in the previous year, according to the most recently available federal statistics.

In sales and service occupations in Ontario, the number of approvals to hire temporary foreign workers tripled.

Wright — who describes himself as “a big proponent of healthy levels of immigration” — questions the wisdom of this approach.

“This notion of, ‘I’m a business, I can’t get workers to work at the wage I want to pay, therefore the government should fix that problem,’ I just think is really misguided,” Wright said in an interview.

For its part, the Ford government is also looking at other ways to expand Ontario’s labour pool, such as streamlining accreditation for certain foreign-trained professionals and tradespeople, or expanding programs designed to help the long-term unemployed get into the workforce.

The labour crunch is undoubtedly most acute in certain sectors of the Ontario economy. You can see that measured by the job vacancy rate: the number of unfilled jobs as a percentage of the employed labour force.

From 2017 through 2019, Ontario’s job vacancy rate averaged 3.1 per cent across all sectors. Over the past year, it’s averaged 5.3 per cent.

Particularly high job vacancy rates are currently found in restaurants and bars (10.2 per cent), nursing homes (8.5 per cent), truck transportation (8 per cent) and building construction (7.7 per cent), according to Statistics Canada.

If the Bank of Canada gets its way, the labour market will shift back toward employers.

“Companies continue to tell us they’re having trouble attracting all the workers they need. That’s a symptom of an overheated economy,” governor Tiff Macklem said Wednesday in a news conference following the Bank of Canada’s announcement of another increase to its benchmark interest rate.

“Part of rebalancing demand and supply in the economy is rebalancing the labour market,” said Macklem.

“We do expect to see some cooling of the labour market. We expect it to come into better balance.”

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Canada’s Denis Shapovalov wins Belgrade Open for his second ATP Tour title

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BELGRADE, Serbia – Canada’s Denis Shapovalov is back in the winner’s circle.

The 25-year-old Shapovalov beat Serbia’s Hamad Medjedovic 6-4, 6-4 in the Belgrade Open final on Saturday.

It’s Shapovalov’s second ATP Tour title after winning the Stockholm Open in 2019. He is the first Canadian to win an ATP Tour-level title this season.

His last appearance in a tournament final was in Vienna in 2022.

Shapovalov missed the second half of last season due to injury and spent most of this year regaining his best level of play.

He came through qualifying in Belgrade and dropped just one set on his way to winning the trophy.

Shapovalov’s best results this season were at ATP 500 events in Washington and Basel, where he reached the quarterfinals.

Medjedovic was playing in his first-ever ATP Tour final.

The 21-year-old, who won the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF title last year, ends 2024 holding a 9-8 tour-level record on the season.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Talks to resume in B.C. port dispute in bid to end multi-day lockout

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VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.

The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.

The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.

The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.

The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.

MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.

In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.

“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.

“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”

In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.

“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.

The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.

“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”

The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.

The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.

A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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The Royal Canadian Legion turns to Amazon for annual poppy campaign boost

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The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.

Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.

Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.

Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.

“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.

“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”

Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.

“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.

Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.

“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”

But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.

Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.

“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.

Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.

The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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