Three weeks after being granted, the business community has not noticed any significant changes to their problem of labor scarcity since the end of the support programs for workers they demanded.
They had been urging the federal government for weeks to end its Canadian Emergency Benefit (CEP) first and then its replacement program, the Canadian Economic Recovery Benefit (CEP). The business community found these measures no longer necessary and considered them so generous that they encouraged workers to stay at home rather than return to the job market, where dozens awaited them. thousands of vacancies. After halving it (from $ 600 to $ 300 per week), Ottawa finally let the PCRE extinguish on October 23.
Since then, we can not say that the situation has improved so much on the ground, observed Friday nearly half a dozen representatives of Quebec employers, who had called the press to raise a new alarm cry on the ” economic catastrophe ”represented by the scarcity of labor. “Some of our members say that as soon as the program ended, there was some interest in vacancies in their sectors,” reported President and CEO of the Quebec Employers Council, Karl Blackburn. .
“We hear certain stories, anecdotes, from people who have returned” to the job market, said Véronique Proulx, CEO of Manufacturiers et exportateurs du Québec. But “the impact, you don’t feel it that much,” she admitted, adding that only time will tell. One thing is certain, she stressed, the problem of labor scarcity continues to worsen, and “matching” work will have to be done between unemployed workers and the needs of the labor market. . “That won’t happen overnight. “
The problem of labor scarcity “is such that it is not because we remove the PCRE that all restaurateurs, all retail businesses will find the necessary employees”, argued François Vincent, vice -President for Quebec at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. “It’s really a series of solutions that must be put in place […], and removing PCRE was one of them. “
Relaunch
The latest official statistics on employment in Canada, as in Quebec, painted a portrait of the situation just before the end of the PCRE. The next probe, the results of which will be unveiled by Statistics Canada at the beginning of next month, could allow the first effects to be observed, noted Joëlle Noreau, economist at Desjardins Group, in an analysis ten days ago. . “It is to be continued. “
Airline pilot in a world where nobody took air travel anymore, Manuel Zerlauth had for a long time had to put together the income provided by the PCRE, the wage subsidy program as well as odd jobs, such as deliveries for Uber, in addition to dig into his savings to ensure his ends of the month. He returned to work last month, not because the end of the PCRE forced him to do so, but because activity started to pick up in his field. “They adjusted the wages to the level of activity, so I don’t earn much more than with government benefits,” says the 50-year-old, who currently works 20 to 25 hours a week. “But it’s good for morale that it picks up slowly. […] Mentally, it was complicated not being able to work. There, it starts again, we do what we like, we take people on vacation. “
With Roxanne Léouzon