CANADA JOB MARKET Review – 2nd Quarter 2013
===
Governments across Canada continue to implement austerity measures, downsize and cut back on programs. The Federal government has reduced its workforce to about 133,000 employees from a high of 155,000 in recent months. Coupled with the demise of the bigger tech employers over the last decade, this has meant the National Capital Region has not been a great place to look for work.
===
Canada, like the rest of the world, was expecting to be dealing with the effects of a retiring “boomer” population by now. The recession and the impact on retirement savings put retirement plans on hold for many, so we have not yet seen a mass exodus from the workforce.
===
Canada’s staffing industry is an excellent barometer of the health of our economy and the Canadian Staffing Index reflects the strength of our job sector. This index was trending up throughout 2012 and in the first couple of months in 2013 is trending about the same as the first quarter of 2012. Here at Eagle we saw about 16% more people applying for jobs in the second quarter of 2013 over the first quarter. At the same time we saw an 8% decrease in demand from our clients. Anecdotally this would support the other indicators that Canadian economic growth is disappointing.
=====