Rising Career Opportunities Amid The Pandemic

Canada has always remained in highlights for extremely high rate of immigration among other developed countries. The increase in the labor force is however not solving the problem of unemployment in Canada. Taking into consideration this year’s statistics (Statistics Canada), unemployment rate in Canada has increased from 7.5% in March 2021 to 8.1% in April 2021.

A major share of the unemployment was caused due to the recently announced immigration policies such as TR to PR pathway and the benefits announced by the government pertaining to COVID-19. The TR to PR pathway was implemented in May 2021 and in this month alone, the labor market was hit with the loss of 68,000 jobs (CBC News). Similarly, when the federal government announced COVID-19 benefits in 2020 for the unemployed people or for the ones whose income got affected due to COVID-19, the unemployment rate increased manifolds and reached up to 9.6% (Statistics Canada).

The exceptionally high unemployment rate is somewhat a reflection of the loop holes in the system and COVID-19 alone cannot be blamed for the spike in unemployment rate. The need of hour is to address this emerging problem of unemployment. With students now immigrating to Canada as travel restrictions are eased and educational institutions are now open for on-campus classes, the businesses are getting a sigh of relief. With a relief in COVID-19 restrictions, there has been a rise in job opportunities in the Canadian labor market. Now the levels of certainty in businesses operations amid the pandemic is increasing, the employers are looking for qualifying candidates for their businesses especially in the front-line sectors.

A huge spike in employment opportunities in the Hospitality industry has been observed. We have been notified by our clients about the increased vacancies in several restaurants, Hotels all across British Columbia. Not only these, the job opportunities in non-essential sectors are also slowly taking the pace as compare to a high demand in essential services. Although there is a rise in vacancies but the TFWP (Temporary Foreign Worker Program) still remains a rigorous procedure with a longer processing time for the LMIAs. These factors also need to be considered when planning for the recruitment needs.

By: R. Kaur

Average Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) processing times for July 2021:

Application type Global Talent Stream Agricultural stream Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program Permanent residence stream In-home caregivers High-wage stream Low-wage stream Average processing time 9 business days 16 business days 8 business days 16 business days 15 business days 34 business days 31 business days