Stacie Fiddler, the Labour Market Group’s (LMG) Executive Director, suggests that there is a disconnect between jobseekers and employers in the North Bay region. Simply, there are jobs available, but many jobseekers think that there is no significant new employment in the regions.
Fiddler was reporting to the City Council about a review conducted by her organization that looked into job vacancies over the last six months. The idea is for local politicians to better understand the situation for the labor market in the region. The review was the longest ever conducted by the Labour Market Group, which typically studies one month periods at a time.
This time the organization started in July last year and looked at the employment situation in North Bay over a half year period. The tracking of trends over a longer period allowed the group to get a better understanding of what industries are hiring the most, what wages are, and how many jobs are on offer.
The group only looks into major job posts issued through major online and print sources, said Fiddler, and on average the organization is picking up 390 vacant job positions each month. That number suggests that there are jobs in the North Bay region. In August there were 463 posts, the highest of the study, while in December there were 325, the lowest.
“I think the data is just a stepping point,” Fiddler said after the meeting. “The whole labour market issue, the job seeker versus the jobs available, is a big issue to tackle – there are a lot of layers.”
The mean hourly salary was $14.81 per hour (for positons that stated such), from a low of just below $10 all the way up to $50. But almost 80 per cent of the postings were below the $15 mark.