The job market in Atlantic Canada has never been better, writes Don Mills.It wasn’t that long ago that for too many younger Atlantic Canadians the only future was going down the road to pursue a career.
Up until very recently, much of the region had a rapidly aging population that included a baby boom generation in the early stage of leaving the workforce. The sheer size of that generation meant there were insufficient replacements among those entering the job market. The story is similar for much of Atlantic Canada. P.E.I. has led the region in full-time job growth over the last five years, as well as in terms of increasing the size of its workforce . This has mostly occurred as a result of the province’s population growth, leading to the lowest unemployment rate on the Island ever .
The situation in Newfoundland and Labrador continues to be more challenging. The only province in the country to see its population decline in the last census, the number of full-time jobs in the province grew 2.6 per cent but its labour force declined 2.3 per cent. That combination still lowered the province’s unemployment rate to 10.3 per cent.There are consequences of a tightening job market; perhaps the most important to the region is labour costs.
Human resource management strategies are increasingly critical to the retention of workers, who have never had more choice in terms of job opportunities, and it has never been so easy to leave one job for another.For Atlantic Canada, by far the largest opportunity to increase labour supply is to increase participation in the workforce.