The 10 hardest jobs for Canadian employers to fill in 2014
Here’s some good news on the jobs front just put out by Statistics Canada this afternoon. In a release called Job vacancies in brief, three-month average ending in May 2014, the agency reveals that the competition for job openings appears to be cooling down.
While one year ago, there were 6.3 unemployed people for every job vacancy in Canada that number has since fallen by half a percent. There are now 5.8 people without jobs for each available opportunity.
They attribute the declining ratio of job seekers to open positions to the country having fewer unemployed people than it did one year ago.
And how many opportunities are there currently? According to Statistics Canada, there are about 240,000 open positions across the country to be filled right now.
Recruitment firm ManpowerGroup’s Talent Shortage Survey recently identified the most difficult of them for employers to hire for in Canada for 2014.
The ten hardest jobs for employers to fill? (and their average Canadian wages)*
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1. Skilled Trade Workers | $52,000 [View jobs]
2. Management/Executives | $91,000 [View jobs]
3. Sales Representatives | $47,000 [View jobs]
4. Engineers | $76,000 [View jobs]
5. Technicians | $49,000 [View jobs]
6. Drivers | $42,000 [View jobs]
7. Accounting & Finance Staff | $59,000 [View jobs]
8. Customer Service & Support | $34,000 [View jobs]
9. IT Staff | $73,000 [View jobs]
10. Administrative Assistants | $42,000 [View jobs]
* Salary data from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey
While the same amount of employers complain of a lack of technical skills in applicants as last year, the greatest increased challenge for employers over 2013 is that fewer candidates are even applying for their jobs. 53% of Canadian employers say that this talent shortage is having a medium to high impact on their ability to meet client needs.
Similarly, Wanted Analytics just this week released a list of the jobs that take the longest to fill in Canada. Transport Truckers tops their list at an average of 55 days to hire. Registered Nurses and Salespeople come next at 50 and 48 days to hire. Conversely, and in contrast to the Manpower report, Wanted says that Administrative Assistants are the positions that take the least time to fill – at just 36 days. You can read the full list here.
Perhaps as a reflection of the declining completion for jobs – and an increased struggle for talent, wages are inching upwards too. The average weekly earnings for Canadians were $937 in May, which works out to roughly $48,725 annually. That is a salary increase of 2.6% over May of 2013.
Two recent employer surveys forecast that Canadian workers can expect an average pay increase of 3% in 2015.
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Peter Harris
– Peter Harris on Twitter
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