In the four corners of Quebec, the entry wage to the factory for inexperienced day laborers has literally exploded in the space of barely four years, approaching 20 dollars an hour in some places in certain industrial parks.
“For entry-level day laborer positions, we were hiring at $14, it’s now $18, so we’re talking about a nearly 30% increase in four years,” shares Karin Boivin, director of human resources at the SME. Quebec company Nétur for machining aerospace parts in Saint-Hubert.
“For all of our salary scales, we are talking about a jump of 20%. We are no longer able to hire at the same salary as before”, sums up the one who is looking for five workers in the workshop.
Decline in vacancies
On Tuesday, Statistics Canada released job vacancies data for the first quarter of 2023, which fell by 33,500 (-3.8%) to 843,200 nationwide.
We also learn that wages have increased less this year than last year at the same date.
“Average offered hourly wage increased 5.0% from a year earlier to $25.40 in the first quarter of 2023, down from the 8.5% increase that increased to $24.90 in the previous quarter.
Among the jobs that posted higher growth were food and beverage processing laborers (+9.7% to $18.70) and material handlers (+9.3% to $18.70). amount to $20.05).
“For us, it’s a headache»
At the Nétur plant, on the South Shore of Montreal, about fifty workers manufacture parts from design to finished product for the Pratt & Whitneys of this world. About twenty others do so from Eastern Europe, in Poland.
For the family SME, however, this wage escalation weighs more heavily, because it is hard to compete with a multinational, which has the means.
“We are looking for day laborers, such as machinists or quality inspectors,” explains Karin Boivin in human resources.
“It’s very difficult to keep an evening shift. For us, it’s a headache. We would like to run our machines longer,” she continues.
Ten kilometers away, in Boucherville, Mélanie Bouchard, of the RoyalTech Fire Protection Systems Group, earns a good $20 an hour as a marker-assembler with her health and safety cards in her pocket.
Melanie Bouchard
Photo Francis Halin
“I am finishing my probation. I am the first and only woman in the shop“Launches, laughing under the beating sun of June, the one who loves her new job.
In the industrial park around her, there are countless posters “We are hiring”, which abound in recent years. From trucking companies to machine shops, we see everywhere that we are still sorely lacking in manpower.
Ste-Marie Truck Center is looking for employees.
Photo Francis Halin
A sign that demand is not running out of steam, there are sometimes laborer or day laborer positions at 30 dollars or even 40 dollars per hour in the regions if we rely on the Indeed job search site.
According to Subcontracting Industrial Quebec (STIQ), smaller businesses are more affected than larger ones by the labor shortage.
“The shortage of labor generates high costs for manufacturing companies. The 2022 Barometer survey reveals that, on average, these costs stand at $840,000 per business,” concludes STIQ.