Nobody's Getting Fired. Nobody's Getting Hired.
If you only read one number this week, make it 30.6%. That's the share of unemployed Canadians who found a job last month, and before the pandemic it was 36.5%. Employers aren't laying people off in big numbers. They're just not hiring, and in our business that's a very different problem. September cost us 68,000 jobs, the public sector is shrinking for a fourth straight month, and looking at it per geography, Quebec has lost 130,000 jobs since January.
Meanwhile vacancies have sat at roughly half a million for seven months, factories are slowing, and service firms are cutting staff while still complaining they can't find skilled people. Then there's the twist that most people kind of bypass (or ignore); participation just hit its lowest level since 1997, and it's not because people are giving up. We're getting older and fewer newcomers are arriving. So we have slack today and very likely scarcity tomorrow while the Bank of Canada is watching oil prices more closely than our job numbers ahead of its Oct. 28 decision.
My take: this is a quarter for staffing firms with deep benches in specialized roles, and a tough one for anyone living on volume.
Here's what we published this week.
Minh Dang - Editor in Chief
—
Canada's Jobs Market Stalls, and the Public Sector Leads the Retreat
"Put plainly, people who lose work are staying out of it longer. That deepens candidate benches in most categories and shifts negotiating leverage toward clients."
Half a Million Open Jobs, and None of Them Moving
"A ratio that tightens because the candidate pool shrinks behaves differently from one that tightens because clients are hiring. The first raises sourcing costs without raising order volume."
Factories Slow and Service Firms Shed Staff Heading Into the Fourth Quarter
“Service providers cut staff in September in response to weaker activity and new business, and S&P Global reported that the cuts were made worse by difficulty finding suitably skilled workers."
A Flat July and a Watchful Central Bank Set Up the Oct. 28 Decision
"The 2027 budget season is under way, and the rate path is genuinely uncertain. Firms building forecasts should model a scenario in which borrowing costs rise, not just one in which they fall."
The Shrinking Workforce Is No Longer a Forecast
"What they can do is plan for a market in which people, not orders, become the binding constraint."