Labour shortage causing business owners to delay or cancel orders: survey
Global News
A recent survey found 49 per cent of business owners have had to delay or have been unable to deliver orders to clients due to a lack of labour.
Nikita George was a fine arts grad looking for a job in the music industry when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
With concert venues shut down and music schools closed, the Calgary woman quickly realized she had two choices sit home and wait for things to improve, or set out on a completely new path.
She chose the latter, enrolling in a six-month rapid-training program offered by Calgary tech training non-profit InceptionU. Last week, George started her new job as a full stack developer for Acuspire, a Calgary tech startup.
“At first I was a little bit scared, because it’s a big jump from music and teaching to tech,” George said. “I thought about just waiting (for the pandemic to end), but then I thought maybe I should take advantage of this. Use the pandemic to learn something, develop a new skill, so that there are other opportunities I could go for.”
Much has been written in recent months about Canadian employers struggling with labour shortages 18 months into the COVID-19 pandemic. A report released Wednesday provides additional evidence, with more than 60 per cent of Canadian businesses saying that widespread labour shortages are limiting their growth.
The report, produced by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), combines the findings of two surveys one that polled 1,251 Canadian entrepreneurs in May 2021 and a survey of 3,000 Canadian employees conducted in June 2021. Its findings suggest 49 per cent of business owners have had to delay or have been unable to deliver orders to clients due to a lack of labour.
It also says many small- and medium-sized business owners report job vacancies sitting empty for three or four months at a time, with 61 per cent saying they’ve had to increase their own hours or their employees’ work hours as a result.
“It’s very serious, because it’s slowing down the growth of many businesses in Canada, and as a result is going to slow down the growth of the economy,” said Pierre Cleroux, BDC’s chief economist.
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