Canadian workers unfazed by rising unemployment as more intend to look for a new job

Canadians are feeling more confident in their ability to find a new job, despite economic uncertainty, high interest rates and rising unemployment, trends which typically inspire them to hunker down where they are.

Recent surveys suggest more workers are actively looking to change roles in the face of these broader economic challenges, owing to a misalignment in priorities and expectations between employers and employees. Experts also suggest that the macroeconomic hardships are not being spread evenly across the job market.

While unemployment has been trending upward since April – now sitting at 6.4 per cent – much of the slowdown has been limited to entry-level workers. Elsewhere, the labour market looks a lot like the relatively strong conditions that were present before the pandemic, with a few new factors – such as inflation, affordability challenges and flexibility – giving workers more reason to seek new opportunities.

According to a recent study by recruitment firm Robert Half Canada, half of Canadian professionals are actively looking or intend to look for a new job in the second half of the year, up from 41 per cent last year. The most frequently cited reason was to pursue a higher salary, followed by better benefits and perks, with flexibility coming in third, just ahead of career advancement.

“It’s an interesting evolution in the market that continues to be fascinating, where you’re seeing these contradictory data points,” says Robert Half Canada senior regional director Mike Shekhtman. “With unemployment on the rise we’re not adding a tremendous amount of jobs to the market, yet Canadians remain confident” that they will be able to secure a new job.

Mr. Shekhtman says despite a weak economy and labour market on paper, many Canadians feel they have more options today than in years past.

“The youth market has been impacted quite a bit – it’s the highest unemployment we’ve seen in that space since 2014 – but at the same time, when you’re looking at more in-demand positions, that percentage is all the way down to 3 per cent for business, admin and finance roles,” he says. “Overall, we’re looking at a market where there is caution from an employer perspective [to spend on hiring], but people that are in-demand know that they can easily walk across the street and find a new position.”

Mr. Shekhtman adds that employers are largely failing to acknowledge the strength of the market for certain skills, which is causing them to make costly mistakes. In a recent Robert Half study of Canadian hiring managers, 41 per cent admitted to making a regrettable hire this year, up from 17 per cent in late 2022.

The three biggest reasons why candidates ultimately didn’t work out were because the employer took too long to extend an offer and lost their top choice, they hired a candidate who left for a job with more flexibility and for failing to put enough emphasis on the candidate’s soft skills. According to Robert Half, it takes an average of five weeks to staff an open position, not including onboarding time.

The Robert Half data echoes the findings of Microsoft and LinkedIn’s global Work Trend Index, which points to an increasing misalignment between employees and employers in an increasingly complex employment landscape.

“Inevitably I think we will continue to see the evolution of the workplace and the definition of work,” says Toronto-area based Jason Brommet, who heads modern work at Microsoft for the Americas. “I actually like to think about it more as a shift in the work that we do and how we get that work done than it is explicitly about people moving organizations.”

Mr. Brommet says with so many of the foundational attributes of work now in flux – from when and where it gets done, to the added complexities of managing the most intergenerational workforce in history, to the introduction of new technologies like artificial intelligence – employees and employers are having a harder time aligning their priorities.

“Our Work Trend Index has been studying this misalignment of employee versus employer expectations for the last four or five years,” he says. “It’s a really interesting time to watch human behaviour, psychology and workforce trends collide, but ultimately it’s a moment for organizations to ensure they have the listening systems in place to understand what employee engagement looks like today.”