According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, entrepreneurs in Northern BC continues to feel the pinch when it comes to unfilled job vacancies and increased costs from the government.
To make matters worse, hiring intentions have slowed to a crawl due to the Employer’s Health Tax set to take place this month, which could also leave a lot of high school and university-aged students left in the cold when finding work.
BC Vice President Richard Truscott recently spoke with Vista Radio on the subject.
“There isn’t a printing press in the basement that creates money, there isn’t a money tree out back, they have to sell a lot more goods and services of whatever they are doing in order to pay for these brand new tax bills from the government and we’re talking about two million dollars on that front.”
“When governments bid up to the price for those entry-level jobs by increasing the minimum wage in such a rapid fashion that is hard for employers to keep up and instead of creating jobs for students and for young people, one simply won’t create those jobs and that’s really unfortunate.”
Over 69,400 unfilled positions remain in BC leaving them with the second-highest vacancy rate in Canada at 3.6%.
However, Truscott is of the opinion that the number could be even higher, especially in the north where smaller operations have a much tougher time filling positions.
“This private sector job vacancy rate does have a lot of questions surrounding it, one of the biggest ones is how many business owners have simply given up and decided that it’s impossible to find enough people and they put their growth plans on hold and they are not doing any hiring as a result.”
“Perhaps, there may be a lot of entrepreneurs who have given up hope on finding the right people and that’s worrisome.”
Quebec has the highest job vacancy rate in the country at 4.1% with over 120,800 unfilled jobs.