Canadian small businesses face labour shortage despite wage hike, report finds

Business owners have attributed the labour shortages to workers avoiding work in a public setting during the pandemic, as well as the previous federal COVID-19 income supports.

More than half of Canada’s small businesses are currently unable to hire enough staff to continue operations or meet new demand — a new report says — despite an almost economy-wide raise in wages.

It’s a dilemma small business owner Jason Schnurr experienced since the beginning of September.

Schnurr, who owns and manages a handful of surf and sportswear stores in Sauble Beach and Port Hope in Ontario, said that his businesses, although seasonal, have been running on a “skeleton crew” for the last three months — and will be expected to stay that way until April of next year.

Schnurr’s businesses, Beachin’ and Jack n Jill’s surf shop, have seen extremely high rates of turnover since the onset of the pandemic, and cannot hire or keep employees despite an increase in wages.

“We have a manager job that has been open since March that we cannot fill, we just don’t get applications for,” said Schnurr in a phone interview with Global News.

“If we weren’t having the labour shortage, we would have filled this position.”

The report, released on Thursday by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), found that 55 per cent of small businesses would not have the staff required to run their stores, though another 16 per cent would be able to continue their operations but at a significant additional cost.

“Small businesses were already experiencing a very significant shortage of labour at the beginning of 2020, and the pandemic has made the situation only more complex,” said CFIB vice-president of national research Simon Gaudreault in a press release.