Saskatoon recruitment agency says demand for labour outstripping supply

Hanif Hemani, executive director of Saskatoon staffing and recruitment company Express Employment Professionals, says job postings in the area are up 55 per cent compared to the week before the pandemic arrived — but the labour pool is roughly the same.

“It's an excess of demand — and the number of workers in the workforce has actually gone up a little bit over the last month compared to the month prior. So that's part of the challenge,” he said.

Worsening the already bleak search for workers are increasing resignations and retirements after nearly two years of COVID-19 changing the work environment.

City Centre Bingo gaming operations manager Gordy Ouellette says that with crowds expected to increase for the rest of the month, he's scrambling to properly staff the bingo hall.

“We’re in the service industry here. If we had 250 people in the hall, one or two people serving coffee during intermission doesn't fly very good,” he said.

Ouellette was forced to lay off nearly all of his staff at the end of 2020 because of gathering restrictions at the time.

Now, he can’t convince anyone to come back.

“There’s two big halls in Saskatoon right now and we're both hanging on dearly to our staff. So it's difficult,” he said.

Hemani said COVID-19 has upended a traditional working day. Workers are forgoing raises or added benefits to stay working at home, and employers haven’t done enough to lure workers back.

“The stick and the carrot aren't really doing anything,” Hemani said. “That genie’s out of the bottle, so to speak — and it's going to change the business world for quite a while.”

A possible way forward to bridge the labour gap could be the largely untapped pool of newcomers to Saskatoon.

“There's a learning curve, but it's a fairly shallow curve for a lot of these folks,” Hemani said of the businesses seeking Express Employment Professionals services.

“Traditionally, we’ve been slow in adopting talent from newcomers in Saskatoon versus other cities around Canada that have sort of figured it out.”