"Right now, companies are experiencing a similar situation: all of their job postings are just not attracting applicants as they used to"Thanks to an influx of retiring baby boomers—300,000 this year!—and employees changing demands coming out of the pandemic, with benefits like flex-hours and options to work-from-home as top priorities, the Canadian job market is facing a hiring bust.
A: I have never seen a market like it is today, post-COVID-19. If we were to go back 25 years ago, the baby boomers would be aged between 35 and 55. That was a really large demographic group, so there was a higher number of candidates out there and available. Now, the youngest portion of the baby boomer group would be 60 years old, and most of them are heading into retirement. So the market is extremely tight for quality candidates at this point.
realized, “Hey, wait a minute. I’m working from home, I can walk the dog at one o’clock, and yet my company just had a record year?” The pandemic empowered candidates to look at opportunities on their terms. That’s been the big difference. They want a flexible working situation, they want to work from home.Asking for flexibility of work location and salary, for sure. I think there’s more pressure from the candidate pool on salary now due to inflation.
Most of the time—more than half the time—people are asking the work-from-home question. And as commutes become more challenging, these questions are more often coming up for those in the major city centres—in the GTA, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary. Q: Which industries are you seeing having to fight for employees and entertain counter-offers the most?
I would say that LinkedIn is the only effective place right now. It’s an interesting tool for the candidate pool, it’s almost like a Facebook for people to put their careers up on the open market.