the assistant manager’s job at $15.05 an hour.
Journeys is not the only employer offering financial incentives for jobs traditionally viewed as low-skilled. Some retail and services companies, like McDonald’s, Indigo Park and Rogers are turning to signing bonuses to entice workers, with the fast food chain offering a $200 signing bonus for new full-time team members.
According to experts, the reasons behind this high demand for labour remains unclear. While employment data for the third quarter published by Statistics Canada show an increase in labour shortages, they can no longer be explained with the notion that people simply aren’t working. “If you compare the employment rate today with two years ago, we’re not that far off,” Labour economist Fabian Lange, with McGill University in Montreal, said. “It’s not like there are fewer workers at work at the moment — not substantially, at least.”
Back in November 2019, the unemployment rate in Canada stood at 5.9 per cent, and two years later, the figure remains comparable, sitting at six per cent.
Several demographic changes, including retirements and fewer young workers available to go into low-paying occupations, may be partly responsible for this shortage, according to Lange. Over the past two years, the biggest wage increases were reported from retail, construction, food services and accommodation. Therefore, given the fact that over the past few decades, the bulk of wage growth was concentrated at the top of the labour market, the labour economist noted that any shortage-induced wage hikes today are cause for celebration. “It’s not a bad outcome in the economy, if we have a lot of productive jobs out there and wages have to go up,” he said.
