Dec. 28, 2021 "How employers desperate for workers are throwing cash at applicants": Today I found this article by Nojoud Al Mallees on CBC news:
A trip to the mall in Fredericton led to much more than a pair of new shoes for Hannah McLeod.
The 21-year-old saw a hiring sign at a shoe store, Journeys, and decided to apply. At the time, McLeod was making $15 an hour at a potato-processing plant in Florenceville-Bristol, N.B., northwest of the city.
She had no experience in retail and assumed that for selling shoes, she would get the provincial minimum wage, which is currently $11.75 in New Brunswick, though it will reach $13.75 next October.
But after her interview with Journeys, she was offered a better job than she expected — and for more money.
McLeod had told the store that, if hired, she would accept $12.50 an hour.
When the district manager called, he instead offered her the assistant manager's job at $15.05.
She was surprised.
"Sometimes it's difficult, especially in retail, to get the pay you not only want but deserve," she said.
Journeys is not the only business trying to make jobs more attractive to potential workers.
Third-quarter employment data from Statistics Canada show that labour shortages have increased across Canada in most sectors,
with a concentration in low-paying occupations.
'Not a bad outcome,' economist says
As a result, employers from coast to coast are offering financial incentives for jobs traditionally viewed as low-skilled.
Some retail and service companies are turning to signing bonuses to entice workers;
McDonald's franchises in Canada, for instance, are offering $200 signing bonuses,
while other companies, such as Rogers and Indigo Park, advertise signing bonuses right in their job postings.
Labour economist Fabian Lange, with McGill University in Montreal, said while the reasons behind the high demand for labour aren't entirely clear as we've settled into the pandemic, it has ultimately been a good thing for workers.
"It's not a bad outcome in the economy,
if we have a lot of productive jobs out there
and wages have to go up,"
he said.
These labour shortages can no longer be explained away with the notion that people simply aren't working, he said.
"If you compare the employment rate today with two years ago, we're not that far off,"
said Lange.
"It's not like there are fewer workers at work at the moment — not substantially, at least."
In November 2019, Canada's unemployment rate was 5.9 per cent. Two years later, it remains comparable, sitting at six per cent.
Demographic changes, including some retirements and fewer young workers available to go into service jobs, like retail, food and accommodation, might be partly to blame for the shortage, said Lange. But long-term trends have pointed in the direction of a tighter labour market, too.
Still, given that the bulk of wage growth over the last several decades was concentrated at the top of the labour market, Lange said, any shortage-induced wage hikes today are cause for celebration.
From 2019 to 2021, the occupations that saw the greatest wage increases were in
construction,
retail,
food services
and accommodation,
and health care.
Retail sales, for example, have seen an 8.9 per cent wage increase over this period.
"A couple of years of strong wage growth in those industries would be something I'd actually very much [appreciate]," said Lange.
"I'd say let's not worry about this; let's not try to solve a problem that's not really a problem."
Employers entering 'wage wars'
After grappling with a persistent labour shortage, Lounsbury Group, an automotive and furniture retailer in New Brunswick,
has started to offer signing bonuses of $500 to $1,000 for hard-to-fill vacancies.
Half the bonus is given with the first paycheque,
while the other half is paid out after the employee finishes a probationary period.
"We were already facing a bit of a challenge finding talented people before COVID hit, but it's been incredibly difficult since," said Michelle Duffie, the company's human resources manager.
In an effort to be more competitive, Duffie said, the company has been upselling perks of working for Lounsbury, as well as implementing financial incentives.
Duffie said she regularly consults with fellow human resources managers to figure out what workers are being offered in terms of pay and incentives.
"The signing bonus came about because one big thing that we've run into is
we'll offer someone a position
… their current employer is countering an offer to them.
Then we're getting into this wage war with the employer."
Duffie said while the signing bonuses have helped a bit with recruitment,
it has not solved the company's overall labour shortage problem.
"We're just starting to see the beginning of the challenge," she said.
"We're going to have to get more creative with our recruitment."
Michael LeBlanc, a senior adviser to the Retail Council of Canada, said the pandemic has spurred retailers to implement incentives that would make them attractive workplaces.
Some of these incentives include
higher pay,
brand incentives,
increased care for health and safety,
and opportunities for growth.
"If you're thinking about your people the way you were 10 years ago, you are probably not the employer of choice."
How employees are treated matters
Back at the mall, McLeod said she believes the staffing shortages might indicate a problem with the way workers are treated by employers.
"Part of it is, you should've been offering [these incentives] to begin with," she said.
"But the other part is: What is so wrong with your workplace that you're so understaffed?"
Although older generations may have tolerated having their labour taken advantage of, McLeod said, her generation is demanding more of their employers.
"It's not only our skills that we're using.
You're being paid for your time
and for your body,
and those are hours you're never going to get back,"
she said.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/hiring-incentives-labour-shortage-1.6296609
Jun. 11, 2025 "Gen Z is facing the worst youth unemployment rate in decades. Here is how it's different": Today I found this article by Jenna Benchetrit on CBC:
Graduation cap in hand, Sarah Chung is posing for photos in school regalia ahead of her convocation ceremony. The campus atmosphere is joyful, but what comes next is sobering:
this honours student is graduating into one of the worst youth labour markets seen in decades.
"It's bleak," said the 23-year-old graduate of the University of Calgary's media and communications program. She hasn't been able to find a job in her field and said she intends to pursue a master's degree.
"I believe that it's tough just because of everything that's happening with the
economy,
with our society
and with politics,"
she said.
"There's a whole [lot] of talk about 'there's a recession coming.' I'm not an economist, but I can also see it as well."
Chung is part of a generation facing Canada's highest youth unemployment rate in about a quarter-century.
Apart from the pandemic,
Canadian graduates between the ages of 15 and 24 are facing the highest unemployment rate this country has seen since the mid-1990s,
according to first quarter data from Statistics Canada.
At that time, Jean Chrétien was Canada's prime minister, Gen Z was but a twinkle in their parents' eyes,
and the global workforce had yet to be transformed by
social media,
gig work
and artificial intelligence.
Fast forward to 2025, and Canada's youngest workers are grappling with a perfect storm of economic conditions:
an inflation crisis that came on the heels of
a pandemic;
a surge in population growth that has outpaced the number of available jobs;
and now, a country teetering closer to recession as the U.S. trade war wreaks uncertainty on the economy.
One expert says youth unemployment can be a "canary in the coal mine"
that foreshadows broader troubles in the labour market.
"It's kind of an early warning indicator,"
said Tricia Williams, director of research at Future Skills Centre, a Toronto Metropolitan University lab dedicated to studying the future of work.
"It's not just about
getting jobs
and skills experience.
It's about the larger structural supports
and the environment
that young people are coming into."
Labour market whiplash
The Canadian labour market has endured a kind of whiplash in recent years.
After pandemic-era restrictions were lifted,
companies celebrated with a hiring spree
— the economy regained jobs it lost during the crisis
and Canadian youth reaped the rewards of a summer job boom.
But employers were soon struggling to find workers and fill postings,
a result of the workforce having shrunk during the pandemic.
The federal government and public policy experts prescribed
higher immigration as an antidote to the shortage,
which led to a rise in the Gen Z and millennial working population.
Hiring sentiment "was really high coming out of the pandemic, which probably was never going to last," said Brendon Bernard, a senior economist at Indeed who closely follows youth labour market trends.
As the hiring backlog cleared, other conditions started to slow the economy down, he added.
The onset of a fierce inflation episode in mid-2021 triggered a domino effect:
consumers pulled back on spending
and the Bank of Canada began an aggressive interest rate hike cycle,
leading businesses to delay hiring as economic confidence deteriorated.
Older workers started working second jobs to pay the bills during the affordability crisis.
Some experts suspect that the automation of routine tasks could be leading to fewer entry-level opportunities,
but there isn't enough data to say how widespread this is.
"As things have turned back
and employer appetite has fallen back down to earth,
the youth employment situation has weakened,"
said Bernard.
'It is disheartening'
Youth unemployment started ticking back up in the spring of 2024.
At the same time,
the number of young people not in education, employment or training
— an economic measure called the NEET rate
— has risen among youth in their early 20s,
mainly driven by non-students having trouble finding work.
Bernard said there was some cautious optimism at the beginning of this year, when the labour market seemed to be stabilizing.
But the Canadian economy has been rocked by U.S. trade war uncertainty since April, potentially stifling the hiring appetite as the overall unemployment rate rises.
"It is disheartening," said Thivian Varnacumaaran, an electrical engineering student in his final year at York University who estimates that he's applied for 400 to 500 jobs — with no luck — since he started searching in December.
"I wouldn't say I'm pessimistic,
but I'm really realistic about the situation,"
the 25-year-old added.
Charles St-Arnaud, chief economist at trade association Alberta Central, says the economy is now "sluggish" even without having breached recession territory. He expects more signs of deterioration in the coming months, and noted that young people will likely bear the brunt of those conditions.
"Often businesses do what I would call the 'last in, first out' type of strategy when they reduce headcount," said St-Arnaud.
"The younger population that has been just hired are more at risk of being laid off in a downturn."
The scars of unemployment
The bleak hiring landscape has some young people taking jobs just to stay ahead of the bills.
"I spent two hours sweeping yesterday, and I have a mechanical engineering degree," said 24-year-old Ben Gooch of Dundas, Ont.
The McMaster graduate is working part-time at a garden centre to cover some of his living expenses,
having applied for upward of 100 jobs since December
with only a handful of interviews to show for it.
"I feel like I'm just throwing darts out at a wall and hoping to get lucky and hit something."
Data shows that it's fairly common for young graduates to work in a job that only requires a high school diploma.
But Canadian research has shown that
being unemployed at a young age during a recession can lead to a persistent but non-permanent earnings loss for many years after
— a well-studied phenomenon known as "wage scarring."
Other research also suggests that entering the labour market during a recession can impact a person's health outcomes.
"Where it can lead to scarring — I mean, we might think of it as sort of
a temporary blemish
— but it can have long term implications when the economy goes into a serious recession,"
said Miles Corak, an Ottawa-based economics professor at the City University of New York's Graduate Centre.
"Long-term earnings prospects are dampened for people graduating during the recession —
not because they're not getting jobs,
but eventually they fall into a part of the labour market that isn't as high-paying,
in types of occupations that they didn't anticipate doing,"
said Corak.
The economic downturns seen in Canada during the early 1980s and 1990s show the impact of that scarring.
Youth unemployment reached a peak of 18.3 per cent in 1983,
and rose again to 17.2 per cent in 1992 and 1993,
with real wage declines observed among the 17 to 24 cohort in the years afterward.
'I'm kind of waiting for life to start'
The lack of opportunities for young people aren't good for the rest of the country either, said Williams, the researcher.
"Young people are a treasure of resource
that we need to support
and also yield dividends from,"
she said.
Corak offers a different perspective.
"I'm not so certain that it impacts the economy [so much]
as the nature of our economy gets imprinted more clearly on younger people,"
he observed.
Some young people, he noted, are doing very well and earning more than their parents did, while others are losing ground.
"What we're seeing is many young people
much more stressed,
and running faster on a treadmill
to stay still."
Lately, Gooch has been reflecting on where his parents were at this stage of their lives.
By the time they were in their mid-20s,
they were working on their careers,
owned real estate
and were building a life together,
he said.
The young engineer hasn't given up on his search
— he's applying for jobs across the country and abroad,
both in and out of his field.
He's accepted that he doesn't know what his circumstances will look like in a year.
"I don't have a full time job yet,
haven't started my career,"
he said.
"I'm kind of waiting for life to start."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/youth-unemployment-rate-1.7549979
My opinion: This part stood out to me:
"I'm kind of waiting for life to start."
Life is now.
I then decided to look up "Life is now" and it lead to this:
"Life is now.
There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.
The other 2 blog posts of the week:
"Ontario orders its public servants back to office full time, saying it reflects ‘current workforce landscape’"/ "‘Back to the Stone Age’: Union representing Ontario professional workers files dispute over full-time return to office policy"
https://badcb.blogspot.com/2026/01/ontario-orders-its-public-servants-back.html
"Tens of thousands of Ontario public servants return to office full-time next week. Here’s what that could mean for Toronto"/ "Ontario government workers set to return to office full time as of today"
https://badcb.blogspot.com/2026/01/tens-of-thousands-of-ontario-public.html
Stacey W, Truro Heights, Nova Scotia, would like to know:
Do you prefer store-brand products rather than brand-name products?
Brand-name products 54.87% (2315)
Store-brand products 45.13% (1904)
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