Local Labour Market Plan – Comprehensive Report March 2018
Executive Summary
The Local Labour Market Plan is an annual report prepared by the Four County Labour Market Planning Board to share labour market characteristics and conditions of Stratford-Bruce Peninsula Economic Region, serving as a basis for discussions on employment issues. This report is divided into four sections: employment services, labour market conditions, industry landscape and action plan.
The employment services section captures client characteristics from service providers’ data. The labour market conditions section contains data from the various sources including the Labour Force Survey. These data include unemployment numbers, unemployment rates, employment numbers, employment by sector, as well as participation rates. The industry landscape section takes a closer look at businesses of all sizes in Bruce, Grey, Huron, and Perth counties, showing business growth and concentration in the catchment area. Key observations from the latest EmployerOne survey are reported to add employer insights into the labour outlook. This report ends with an action plan outlining progress made towards building a sustainable workforce in the region.
In this report:
- The Stratford-Bruce Peninsula Economic Region has a tight labour force with 7,100 job seekers and an unemployment rate of 4.5% in 2017.
- Employment service providers in the region continue to play a vital role in assisting unemployed people in securing employment.
- The number of active apprentices in the Stratford-Bruce Peninsula Economic Region dropped significantly in 2017.
- In 2017, sectors with top employment numbers in the region are Wholesale and retail trade, Manufacturing, Health care and social assistance, Construction, and Agriculture respectively.
- Stratford-Bruce Peninsula Economic Region has a high concentration of businesses in Agriculture.
- The availability of qualified workers overall was perceived to be fair to poor.
- Employers are experiencing job separations, and had hard-to-fill positions.
- Employers had long-standing concerns about labour force retention within the tight labour market.
- Lacking soft skills such as work ethic, self-motivated, and teamwork ability were the most reported reasons for hard-to-fill positions.
- Employers are reluctant to provide apprenticeship opportunities due to the lack of requisite staffing ratios, loss of time/productivity, financial hardship, and loss of employees to other organizations once trained.
