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Finding a job can be hard work. Finding a good job has become the equivalent of running a marathon for a lot of Canadians in the past six months
A CIBC study looking at job availability and job quality over the last year paints a disappointing picture of the country's labour market in 2011.
The bank's Canadian Employment Quality Index looks at job quality in three ways: part-time versus full-time distribution, the composition of paid employment and the number of self-employed workers.
"While our index is well above the level seen during the recession, it is down by more than one point over the past year," writes study author, Bejamin Tal. "By province, the largest drop was observed in Ontario, followed by British Columbia. In contrast, Alberta continues to generate high-quality jobs at a rapid pace."
Most of that growth occurred during the first six months of the year. Employers created just shy of 200,000 positions between January and the end of June. The number was less than 10,000 in the second half.
According to the study, there were seven per cent more positions to fill in Alberta than there were one year earlier. Employment in Atlantic Canada was up roughly four per cent, while Quebec showed a two and a half per cent net gain.
But with the quantity and quality of work taking a nosedive in the last six months, CIBC says it's no surprise disposable income didn't change much last year, either. In fact, 2011 goes into the books as the worst year in the last 15.
Numbers released January 26 by Statistics Canada on showed weekly earnings for working Canadians rose 2.2 per cent year-over-year from November 2010 to $883.96 for non-farm payroll employees.
After months of increases, people were still working fewer hours per week than they did a month earlier, Statistics Canada said. In November, the average number of hours worked per week fell from 33.1 hours a year earlier to 32.9 hours.
The make-up of how those people earned their money changed, too, during the year.
CIBC says the number of full-time positions rose 1.5 per cent in 2011 and accounted for all of last year's job creation. Part-time work dried up by 0.3 per cent.
Another indicator is the number of self-employed. Report authors say the two per cent increase in the number of self-employed Canadians created a corresponding drop in overall job quality.
"Self-employment is resuming its traditional late cycle behaviour and, in many ways, is now working to mask some of the softening in the Canadian labour market," the report reads." From a quality perspective, the surge in self-employment reduces the overall quality of employment — largely due to the fact that, on average, a self-employed person earns 10–15 per cent less than a regular employee."
For every high-paying job created, three low-paying ones sprang up, CIBC says.
Most of the growth last year was in lower-paying fields such as accommodation services, restaurants, wood and miscellaneous manufacturing and personal care.
Traditional high-paying jobs in fields like public administration, chemical manufacturing, computer and electronic manufacturing, petroleum and coal manufacturing, transportation, and mining all experienced net losses in the number of positions available last year.
While work disappeared in traditional high-paying fields, employees who were left did earn more by the end of the year.
StatsCan says average weekly earnings in administration and support services increased 4.9 per cent to $734.24.
Average weekly pay in manufacturing, meanwhile, increased 2.5 per cent to $999.75, with growth spread across
many industries.
Climbing up the salary ladder, average weekly earnings increased 2.9 percentage points to $1,229.64 in professional, scientific and technical services. The biggest pay raises were in management, scientific and technical consulting; accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping payroll services; and architectural, engineering and related services.
But the two highest-paying fields also received the largest pay raises last year. From November 2010 to November 2011, pre-tax pay increased 7.8 per cent to $1,705.73 in the utilities field. Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction paid an average of 3.7 per cent more boosting earnings to an average $1,788.92 per week.
By comparison, staff working in the retail trade saw average weekly earnings rise 3.8 per cent to just $521.41.
