Some small businesses have made changes to increase their competitiveness in the job market, such as increasing wages, but only 22% of those who increased wages found it effective.
Small businesses were already experiencing a significant labour shortage at the beginning of 2020, and the pandemic has only exacerbated the situation.
Social services and hospitality saw a respective, 37% and 48% of their employee’s switching fields.
These businesses said that they received no qualified applicants, or no applicants at all for positions available at their business, even after raising their wages.
In Q1 2021, 22% of the unemployed had a level of education equal to or higher than a bachelor’s degree, while only 15% of the market requires this level of education.
Opening the TFWP to a larger subset of the business community would allow for a tempered influx of labour—while retaining the necessary skills to match what the employers and what the employees are looking for.
The TFWP also allows for those businesses in the most direct need to apply for additional workers themselves, without having to worry about competing for the labour pool directly.
This price point can marginalize some businesses from participating in the program before they have even applied, as they are not guaranteed to be matched with a temporary foreign worker even after paying for the Labour Market Impact Assessment .
Small businesses have a long and steep climb to recovery and having the right workers in place or other tools to address labour shortages is a big part of that.