BC Business
Vancouverites should see more positives than negatives in the job market early next year. Staffing services firm ManpowerGroup (a U.S. multinational with a Canadian base in Toronto) has released its Employment Outlook Survey, which shows that a positive hiring climate is in the cards for Metro Vancouver in the first quarter of 2019. Among...
Vancouverites should see more positives than negatives in the job market early next year.
Staffing services firm ManpowerGroup (a U.S. multinational with a Canadian base in Toronto) has released its Employment Outlook Survey, which shows that a positive hiring climate is in the cards for Metro Vancouver in the first quarter of 2019.
Among respondents in the Lower Mainland, the ratio of adding to cutting jobs signals employment growth.
“Survey data reveals that 10 percent of employers plan to hire for the upcoming quarter (January to March), while 3 percent anticipate cutbacks,” Richard Plumb, branch manager of ManpowerGroup’s Vancouver office, said in a statement. “Another 87 percent of employers plan to maintain their current staffing levels in the upcoming quarter.”
However, businesses face several speed bumps that account for the decrease in hiring rates in Vancouver over the past quarter. Cost-cutting and rising wages have led to a slowdown as companies try to hire smart while remaining a force to be reckoned with in their industry.
There have also been some hardships of late on the national scale: even with the unemployment rate at a 40-year low of 5.8 percent, job growth in Canada fell short of expectations during the last three months of 2018.
“Employers are having difficulty finding qualified candidates to fill open jobs, which, in turn, is driving up wages, but companies are also trying to do more with less to stay competitive,” said Darlene Minatel, country manager for ManpowerGroup Canada.
“Employees are being asked to do more work with less pay, and an increasing number of employers are investing in automation to perform labour-intensive functions.”
In fact, even as more employers plan to hire than cut back, the outlook in B.C.‘s biggest city still represents a 3-percent decline from the last quarterly outlook and a 6-percent drop from this time last year.