Travis O’Rourke, president of Hays, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss Canada’s February jobs data.
It’s hard to pull good news from Canada’s recent labour report, after recording an unexpected loss of 84,000 jobs, however, one labour analyst says it can only get better from here.
With employment falling across the manufacturing, services, wholesale, and construction sectors, it’s been “one terrible month” for Canadian jobs, says Travis O’Rourke, labour analyst and president of recruitment agency, Hays.
“Bloodbath is the right word,” he says, adding the general consensus among economists was that there would be an additional 10,000 jobs added in February.
Instead, Canada lost more than 100,000 full-time jobs with the unemployment rate climbing 0.2 per cent to 6.7 per cent, according to Statistics Canada’s February Labour Force Survey,
This is after January saw a loss of 25,000 positions.
While the numbers look “bad” now, O’Rourke says things will most likely pick up in the spring and summer due to job opportunities stemming from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s infrastructure investments and the much-awaited Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) review deadline on July 1.
“I think there’s brighter signs ahead,” says O’Rourke.
AI will bring jobs, but it will take time
Normally the employment market is shaped like a pyramid where there are lots of entry level-jobs at the bottom, but now it is shaped like a diamond where entry-level jobs are scarce, says O’Rourke.
He says it’s becoming easy for companies to remove entry-level jobs that are easily replaced by artificial intelligence.
The recent job report shows a loss of 27,000 jobs in February for young workers between 15 to 24 years of age.
“To get in that entry-level role right now is very difficult, so people are still moving up nicely,” says O’Rourke, but “it’s easy to cut costs by saying we’re not hiring new grads.”
Canada will need more skilled trade workers, especially women
Jobs in Canada’s construction sector are poised to grow rapidly as the country prepares to meet the global demand for critical minerals for data centers, but finding workers in skilled trades will be a particular challenge, says O’Rourke.
“We’ve got about 700,000 skilled trades workers set to retire by 2028 and we’re only graduating 75,000 per year,” he says.
“We cannot address the gap in skilled trades without engaging females into that workforce.”
Women made up about seven per cent of total trade jobs in 2025, while men made about 93 per cent, according to Statistics Canada.
He stated that the construction industry needs a cultural shift to support women and more proactive efforts are needed to encourage their entry into the trades.
“The Jack of all trades needs to be Jill of all trades,” said O’Rourke.