The Christmas holiday season doesn’t look like it’s going to be the boon for job seekers that it has been in the past.
According to the latest Conference Board of Canada help-wanted index published in late October, the near-term projects for employment are negative for half of the 26 metropolitan areas covered by the think-tank.
Job prospects in B.C. in particular have gone negative in recent months. Between March and June, Vancouver, Victoria and Abbotsford either had stable or improving near-term job prospects.
But since July, prospects in Vancouver and Victoria have declined. Only Abbotsford still had an improving job market in October.
A more specific sign of the times might be Burnaby-headquartered electronics retailer Future Shop. This year, it announced it was hiring 3,000 in-store employees for the Christmas season. That’s down from the 4,000 it said it would hire in the past two Christmas shopping seasons.
The 25% drop in the number of seasonal store jobs was offset by a 30% increase in its IT department to support the company’s website and e-commerce sales, which it said has increased more than 50% in the past year.
The conference board suggested the declining prospects in Western Canada were temporary given how tight the labour market remains across the country’s four westernmost provinces. But whether job prospects improve in the coming months remains to be seen.
Both RBC and BMO came out with surveys suggesting more small businesses would be hiring in the coming year. The RBC survey showed that nearly 30% will be hiring employees in the next 12 months, up from 25% in the same period in 2011.
BMO’s survey found 27% of B.C. businesses plan to hire more in the next year, the highest proportion of businesses surveyed across the country.
Those looking for temporary work or just entering the market might have the best prospects. The BMO survey noted that 24% of small businesses planned to hire contract employees, while nearly half of large companies are focused on hiring for junior positions. •
