'Employers still in the market for workers over the holidays will have an easier time filling short-term positions'
Holiday hiring in Canada has hit a slump for the 2024 season, with job postings for seasonal roles down significantly from previous years, according to a report by Indeed Hiring Lab.
As of November 1, job postings with holiday-related terms were 15% lower than the same time last year and 16% below 2019 levels.
“One driver of this seasonal weakness probably stems from lagging demand for workers in the retail and customer-facing sectors more broadly,” said Brendon Bernard, senior economist, Indeed Hiring Lab. “Over three-quarters of Canadian holiday postings in October 2024 were for positions in retail, sales, or customer service. Job postings in these occupations, in general, were all further below their pre-pandemic levels than the economy-wide average.”
Source: Indeed
The growth of e-commerce has likely contributed to this weakness, according to the report. In fact, about 6% of Canadian retail sales in 2024 have been through online platforms. While that data does not include non-Canadian websites, it is still well above the 4% share reached before its spike during the pandemic.
The decline in holiday job postings over the past two years has closely tracked broader trends in economy-wide postings, according to the report.
By early November, only 1.2% of Canadian job postings included holiday-related terms, compared to 1.5% in 2019.
In October, Canada’s labour market grew by just 15,000 jobs (+0.1%), a minor gain that was largely offset by population growth, leading to a 0.1 percentage point decline in the employment rate to 60.6%, according to Statistics Canada (StatCan).
Canadians’ interest in holiday hiring
While employer demand for seasonal roles has softened, job seeker interest has risen. In early November, 0.27% of job searches on Indeed included holiday-related terms, up from 0.24% in 2023 and 0.20% in 2022. This marks the second consecutive year of growth in seasonal job searches, reflecting the challenges job seekers face in a soft labour market.
Source: Indeed
“Weak seasonal hiring appetite, along with ample job seeker interest, suggest employers still in the market for workers over the holidays will have an easier time filling short-term positions to end the year,” said Bernard. “However, the outlook remains challenging for those looking for seasonal work. These dynamics have generally been defining features of the Canadian labour market throughout 2024.”
He added that this could potentially be a sign that November and December will offer a repeat of the recent tough summer job market, in which the unemployment rate among students planning to return to school in the fall was the highest (outside of 2020) since 2012.
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