Reduction in Quebec labour shortage follows hiring slowdown: employment report
Posted February 12, 2025 4:40 pm.
In a reversal of pandemic-era labour shortages, last year saw Quebec employers slow down hiring as the province’s economy experienced an increase in people looking for work, according to the 2024 employment report published by the Institut du Québec Wednesday.
Employers were reluctant to hire workers in the face of “still high interest rates and prices and an increase in available workers driven by unprecedented temporary immigration,” according to the report.
Last year saw the amount of jobs in the province increase by more than 70,000, while the labour force increased by more than 190,000.
Meanwhile, the rate of unemployed people in Quebec looking for a job fell from 39 per cent to 33 per cent between December 2023 and December 2024, while the province’s job-termination rate remained stable at just under two per cent in the same period, according to the report.
“The situation could be completely different in 2025, which is opening up to new upheavals with the uncertainty of trade relations with the United States,” said Emna Braham, president and CEO of the Institut du Québec. “In a job market that has already gone from shortage to exhaustion, this context suggests a further slowdown in hiring, or even layoffs.”
However, the report said that not all workers will be affected equally by the economy’s slowdown, with newcomers to the labour market being particularly vulnerable. The report details that unemployment rates for temporary immigrants was three times higher that of Quebec residents in December 2024.
Depending on the intensity and duration of the United States’ tariff measures, the slowdown could also extend to 2025.
Approximately 95,000 jobs in Quebec are currently closely tied to exports in the U.S., which the report said would be the first to be affected.
“A Canadian response would broaden the impact, affecting both importers and exporters. In turn, other sectors could also be affected if the slowdown were to spread to the entire economy,” the report adds.
