Next year’s post-secondary graduates will be facing the same tough hiring conditions across Canada that this year’s grads faced, according to a report by the Canadian Association of Career Educators and Employers (CACEE).
“It’s going to be a flat market [in 2012],” CACEE executive director Paul Smith told Business in Vancouver. “We’re predicting a 2.9% decline but that’s within margin of error, so we’re going to call that flat.”
The CACEE Campus Recruitment and Benchmark Survey Report – 2011 compiles surveyed hiring intentions from companies that recruit at post-secondary campuses. Smith said on-campus recruiting is a key indicator of the broader hiring environment.
“On-campus recruiting is a barometer for the rest of the economy,” he said. “If an employer is having struggles and money’s tight, one of the first things they do is they stop hiring – and one of the first places they stop hiring is they stop the new hires. And then when health returns, it’s one of the first places that they come back to because it’s still relatively inexpensive.”
Smith said the CACEE has been carrying out the survey since 2007. He said the last positive hiring environment for new grads was in 2007 and 2008.
“We expected 2008 to be terrible but it was actually OK,” he said. “2009 was where the bottom fell out, 2010 showed a slight improvement and we’re still kind of struggling to climb.”
Jenny Wagler
@JennyWagler_BIV