Ontario is on a hiring blitz, with Rona, Canadian Tire among companies looking for workers
Ontario is seeing a boom in employment as companies embark on a hiring blitz after Omicron battered the job market in January.
Employment in Ontario in February jumped by 194,000 jobs or 2.6 per cent from the previous month when the economy experienced mass job losses from the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Once workplaces and public settings started to reopen at the end of January, the demand for jobs rose, said Douglas Porter, chief economist and managing director of BMO Financial Group.
The accommodation and food services sector saw the biggest jump with more than 113,000 jobs filled, while the information, culture and recreation sector filled more than 72,000 positions. The professional, scientific and technical services sector hired workers for more than 47,000 positions, according to Statistics Canada.
The number of people employed should continue to rise with the sustained reopening," said Porter. But there won't be a huge surge similar to what we saw in February, he added.
A better way to look at it is the number of people employed in February 2022 versus December 2021 and it's up by almost 50,000 which is pretty solid," Porter said.
Since February 2020, before the pandemic hit, employment in Ontario has grown by 200,000 workers.
The unemployment rate in Ontario fell to 5.5 per cent in February 2022 which matched the national number," Porter said. In February 2020 it was also 5.5 per cent, so we're almost back to where we were before the pandemic began. It's a remarkable achievement considering the damage experienced."
As warmer weather approaches, some companies are on a hiring blitz for seasonal positions.
Rona has job postings for hundreds of positions in the GTA, with many in home and garden, and customer service.
Canadian Tire has dozens of jobs in Toronto for sales, garden centre, and automotive positions.
The travel industry is also experiencing a boom as evident in March break travel numbers and many households are planning to jet off this summer. Hundreds of permanent and temporary jobs in the industry have recently been posted on recruitment site, Indeed.com.
This massive surge in hiring in Canada and GTA is likely to continue when March's data is released," said Brett House, vice-president and deputy chief economist at Scotiabank.
The strong hiring is due to loosening of restrictions which continued into March with the mask mandate lifting - impacting the service sector particularly restaurants, culture and entertainment.
As these restrictions fall and people go out and spend more, businesses will be hiring in greater numbers," he said.
On job recruitment site TorontoJobs.ca, postings in the hospitality industry are plentiful.
I would say hospitality is on the rise with things opening up and people are anxious to get back into concerts, travel, and eating out," said Marc Belaiche, president of TorontoJobs.ca.
About 26 per cent of job postings on the site are for hospitality, food services, and travel, he said.
The construction industry has also been booming for some time with the demand for renovations and upgrades stemming from people creating functional spaces at home for remote work, he added.
However, retail and warehousing have been affected by logistics complications impacting the job postings on the site.
Sixteen per cent of job postings on TorontoJobs.ca are in construction, while 14 per cent are in retail.
There is an abundance of tech jobs on the site, representing 32 per cent of total job postings. That has been steady since the pandemic began, Belaiche said.
A recent survey by ManpowerGroup, a company focused on workforce solutions, found that Canadian employers anticipate a prosperous hiring climate for the second quarter of 2022.
The survey of more than 1,000 employers across Canada found that 49 per cent plan to increase staffing levels in the second quarter of 2022, while 13 per cent anticipate cutbacks.
Ontario, one of the provinces with the strongest growth, is anticipating a 39 per cent increase in its labour force.
But, Scotiabank's House said hiring workers when there are hundreds of thousands of job vacancies across Canada will be challenging.
There isn't a lack of demand, but there's an inability to find workers for the jobs advertised," he said.
Higher wages are needed to help fill those vacancies, especially for minimum wage jobs in the retail and service industry, said Philip Cross, senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and former chief economic analyst at Statistics Canada.
According to Statistics Canada, average hourly wages have been on an upward trend on a year-over-year basis, reaching 2.7 per cent in December 2021 before falling back to 2.4 per cent in January 2022.
Employers need to pay more if they want people to work in these industries. The wage rate for vacant positions is rising much faster than the wage rate for filled positions. Raising wages is the first and necessary step to find people to fill these positions," Cross said.
BMO's Porter is hopeful seasonal work can boost hospitality, service, and travel jobs - the hardest hit sectors in the pandemic.
There's a lot of pent up demand for going out and travelling again," Porter said. The question is, can these businesses get enough workers? There is a lot of room for a big comeback in service and hospitality sectors."
Ontario is almost fully reopened and while the wonton spending economists expected is contained due to the war in Ukraine - which spurred fuel prices to soar, impacting travel and food costs - there will be an uptick in spending this summer, Porter said.
Canadians are anxious to get back to spending. That leads to more hiring."
Clarrie Feinstein is a Toronto-based staff reporter for the Star. Reach Clarrie via email: clarriefeinstein@torstar.ca