Canadian employees, once calling the shots in a world of record high job vacancies, now believe the tables have turned and that employers have the upper hand when it comes to hiring, a new survey has found.

Fifty-seven per cent of people looking for work said they think it will be a slog to find a job over the next six months, according to a survey released earlier this week, conducted by the U.S. market research company Harris Poll for human resources firm Express Employment Professionals. The survey lifted the veil on the job search experience, and the rising number of hurdles Canadian workers perceive or are encountering along the way.

More job hunters now believe there are fewer opportunities overall — 38 per cent, up from 31 per cent last fall and spring.

Digging deeper, a declining number of job seekers believe opportunities exist in their field, with only 20 per cent saying that is the case, down from 27 per cent in the fall of 2023 and 33 per cent in the spring of that year.

Canada’s jobs market has changed on several fronts.

Employers indicated in the most recent Bank of Canada Business Outlook Survey (BOS) that worker shortages have significantly moderated, to that point that job vacancies have receded to pre-pandemic levels from record highs of more than one million in May 2022. In the BOS, 40 per cent of businesses said they did not plan to do any hiring over the next 12 months.

The unemployment rate, which dropped to a COVID-reopening low of 4.8 per cent in July 2022, held steady at 6.4 per cent in July from June. Economists pointed to many signs of stress in the labour market based on the latest report from Statistics Canada, including a declining jobs participation rate and a continued slide in the population-to-employment ratio.

“It is becoming much more challenging to find a job for those who are unemployed for the long term (27 weeks or more),” economist David Rosenberg of Rosenberg Research and Associates Inc., said in a note on the July jobs report, which came out Aug. 8.

Lengthy job searches counted as a growing concern in the survey.

Nearly two in five unemployed people (or 38 per cent) looking for work said they had been searching for more than two years.

The poll also asked people who were unemployed how they came to be jobless. Among the main reasons were: individuals quitting their job voluntarily (18 per cent), being laid off (15 per cent) and being fired (10 per cent). Almost half of those who quit their job said they did so because they were moving away from their work location. The rest of those who quit cited burnout (21 per cent), wanting better pay (16 per cent), better benefits (16 per cent) or a dislike of the company culture (15 per cent).

The survey uncovered other on-the-ground signs the labour market has shifted.

While 80 per cent of job seekers want a full-time position, almost half indicated they would accept a part-time job, up from 38 per cent in spring 2023. Just over a quarter said they would sign on for temporary or seasonal work compared with 16 per cent in spring 2023. Some even said they would accept positions below their most recent pay level — 15 per cent compared to seven per cent in spring 2023.

Even employed people who are looking to change jobs harbour anxieties about their employment.

• 47 per cent worry they won’t get the raise they deserve;
• 32 per cent worry about a slowdown in work opportunities due to the economy;
• 27 per cent worry about their company reducing the workforce due to the economic climate;
• 23 per cent worry artificial intelligence/technology will replace their position, an increase from 12 per cent in spring 2023.
• More than half of employed job seekers said they worked longer hours and more shifts than usual in the past year, a large increase from 37 per cent in fall 2023.

The Job Seeker Report was conducted online in Canada between May 28 – June 10, 2024, among 505 adults ages 18 and older.

Source: The Financial Post