Hire Learning Initiative in Review 2013-2014

Contents 2

About the Hire Learning Initiative

3

Purpose of this review

4

Overall Hiring Trends

5

Trends by Industry

7

Trends by Occupation

8

Looking to the 2014-2015 Hire Learning Initiative

1

About the Hire Learning Initiative Collecting Hamilton’s real-time local labour market information The labour market is constantly evolving and adapting to economic conditions, opportunities and challenges. In-demand occupations, industries and skill requirements can change from year-to-year and from city-to-city. There are many external sources of labour market information (LMI) that can provide insight into Hamilton’s changing conditions; however, they do not provide the level of detail or relevancy that job seekers, policy makers, educational institutions and other community agents need. The Census/National Household Survey, which provides detailed industry and occupational information, is collected only once every five years and can quickly become dated. Other sources of LMI, such as the monthly Labour Force Survey, are collected on a more frequent basis, but are not as detailed or as localized as the Census.

There are knowledge gaps about Hamilton’s current local labour market conditions.

The Hire Learning Initiative (HLI) therefore aims to fill the LMI gaps for the Hamilton community by finding out what Hamilton employers are looking for on a real-time basis.

Components of the Hire Learning Initiative There are two main components of the HLI: quarterly job vacancy reports and an annual survey sent out to Hamilton employers.

1. Help Wanted in Hamilton - Quarterly Job Vacancy Reports Beginning in April 2013, WPH began contracting with Millier Dickinson Blais and Vicinity Jobs Inc to receive quarterly job vacancy statistics. Vicinity Jobs’ technology platform collects data from online job postings including location, industry, occupation, type of employment, duration of employment, and job posting source. In addition to organizations’ websites, postings from all major job boards are considered, including Monster.ca, Workopolis.com, Jobbank.gc.ca, Indeed.ca, and Careerbuilder.ca, as well as the classified section of local newspapers and specialized job boards. Duplicated postings are removed from the sample to ensure accuracy. While not all jobs are posted online, the quarterly reports do provide insight into the types of

2

jobs available in Hamilton over the past three months. These reports are presented as infographics and are available on Workforce Planning Hamilton’s website.

2. Hire Learning Survey – Annual Employer Survey In January 2014, WPH released the first annual Hire Learning Survey (HLS). The survey was distributed with support from community partners to employers across the city to capture real-time local LMI such as current and future hiring needs, skill and educational requirements, turnover and recruitment difficulties. A total of 166 employers across all industries and employee-size ranges fully completed the survey. The complete series of results can be also be found on Workforce Planning Hamilton’s website.

Purpose of this Review Together, the quarterly job vacancy reports and the Hire Learning Survey give the Hamilton community a sense of where the jobs are now and where the jobs are likely to be in the coming year. This report will review any major trends that emerged through both components of the HLI and show how to analyze the results together to find out the hiring trends in Hamilton from April 2013 – March 2014.

As this was the first year of the Initiative, the time series analysis is somewhat limited. In future reports, we will be able to compare year-over-year data to enrich our knowledge of how the labour market is changing over time.

This review will look at the year April 2013 - March 2014 using both the job vacancy statistics and the Hire Learning Survey results to provide an overall look at hiring demand trends in Hamilton over the past year.

3

Overall Hiring Trends

2600 2400 2200 2000 1800 1600 1400 1200 1000

8 7.5 7 6.5 6 5.5 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 Apr May Jun

Jul

Aug Sep 2013

Oct Nov Dec

Jan

Feb

Unemployment Rate (%)

Number of Postings

Figure 1. Number of Online Job Postings (Hamilton) and Unemployment Rates (Hamilton CMA) by Month

Mar

2014

Number of Postings

Unemployment Rate

Hiring demand in Hamilton fluctuated throughout the year, reaching a high of 2,508 postings in October and a low of 1,728 postings in February. Much of the fluctuation can be attributed to seasonal differences, with many businesses increasing hiring for the summer or winter holiday months. The monthly unadjusted unemployment rate for the Hamilton CMA is included in Figure 1 for reference.

Online job postings do not encompass all available positions in the community. The Hire Learning Survey found that only 67% of respondents use online platforms to advertise for open positions.

4

Trends by Industry Industry-specific job vacancy data is only available if the job posting could be matched to a NAICS-coded employer from the Hamilton Business Directory database. The business directory contains over 17,000 of Hamilton’s 30,000 total businesses. Employers were identified for 5,601 job ads – approximately 22% of all postings. The distribution of jobs between industries calculated for this sample is applied to the complete data set.

Table 1. Industry by Job Ads (Vicinity Jobs) and Employment (Labour Force Survey) Industry

% of Job Ads 26.1% 19.4% 11.6% 9.5% 7.1% 4.8% 4.4% 4.2% 3.4% 3.1% 2.3% 1.9% 1.4% 0.5% 0.1%

Trade Manufacturing Health care and social assistance Educational services Finance, insurance, real estate and leasing Public administration Accommodation and food services Professional, scientific and technical services Transportation and warehousing Other services Construction Business, building, other support services Information, culture and recreation Utilities Agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting

% of Employment (2013 Hamilton CMA) 15.2% 12.6% 13.3% 8.3% 7.0% 3.9% 6.7% 7.8% 4.2% 3.6% 7.7% 4.3% 3.9% x 1.0%

Table 1 shows industries in order of online job postings. Industries with the most job ads were also the industries that have higher employment in the Hamilton CMA. Trade, manufacturing, health care, and educational services accounted for two-thirds of all online job ads throughout the year.

5

Top Industry Trends April 2013- March 2014 Figure 2. Number of Monthly Job Postings by Industry in Hamilton (Vicinity Jobs Inc)

Number of Postings

250

200 150 100 50

0 Apr May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov Dec

Jan

Trade

Manufacturing

Health care and social assistance

Educational services

Feb

Mar

Figure 2 shows the number of job postings each month for the top industries in Hamilton. There are apparent hiring cycle differences between industries, with trade in particular having fluctuation throughout the year.

6

Trends by Occupation Table 2. Occupational Group by Number of Job Ads (Vicinity Jobs) Number of Postings 4,638 2,956 2,900 2,426 2,228 2,090 2,089 1,753 1,731 1,197 499 331 329 6 25,173

Occupational Group Sales and Service Management Other Help Wanted (including warehouse jobs) Trades, Transport, Construction Administrative and Legal Health Business, Finance, Accounting Engineers, Architects, IT, Natural Science Processing, Manufacturing, Utilities Social, Government, Religious Services Arts, Cultural, Recreation, Sports Education Farming, Fishing, Natural Resources TOTAL

% of All Postings 18.4% 11.7% 11.5% 9.6% 8.9% 8.3% 8.3% 7.0% 6.9% 4.8% 2.0% 1.3% 1.3% 0.0% 100%

The most common type of job posting is for a sales or service position. Sales and service is the most common occupational class by total employment, not only in Hamilton, but Ontario and Canada as well. Many of sales and service jobs that are most heavily advertised are lowerskilled and provide opportunity for workers to gain both experience and in-demand employable skills.

The top advertised occupational groups were also mentioned by employers during the Hire Learning Survey as occupations likely to be in the greatest demand over the next year. 1 Professionals, followed by sales and marketing, administrative and clerical, and technical, were the occupational groups the highest number of respondents expected to increase in the next year.

1

Occupational groups collected by Vicinity Jobs and the Hire Learning Survey are not exactly the same, but the general nature of the occupational groups can be compared.

7

In-Demand Occupational Class Trends Figure 4 shows how hiring demand changed for each of the four largest occupational groups throughout the year. The occupational groups show similar fluctuations in the number of postings throughout the year, which speaks to the seasonality of hiring patterns. Next year we will be able to compare year-over-year data to assess each trend.

Figure 3. Hiring Trends for the Top Occupational Groups by Number of Postings, April 2013 - March 2014

NUmber of Postings

550

450 350 250 150 50 Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Jan

Feb

Mar

Sales and service Management Help wanted (including warehouse jobs) Trades, transport, construction

Looking to the 2014-2015 Hire Learning Initiative Workforce Planning Hamilton will continue the Hire Learning Initiative for the April 2014 – March 2015 year. With a second year of online job vacancy statistics, we can begin to analyze year-over-year time trends in each quarterly vacancy report. The time series analysis can enrich our understanding of labour market trends by providing another context to which we can compare the data.

WPH will also once again be releasing the Hire Learning Survey in January 2015 to gather indepth knowledge from employers not collected through other surveys. Similar to the job vacancy reports for this year, we can begin to track changes over time with the second release of the HLS.

8