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Contents 2 About the Hire Learning Initiative 3

Purpose of this review

4 Overall Hiring Trends

5 Trends by Industry

7 Trends by Occupation

8 Looking to the 2014-2015 Hire Learning Initiative

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About the Hire Learning Initiative

Collecting Hamilton’s real-time local labour market information

The labour market is constantly evolving and adapting to economic conditions, opportunities

and challenges. In-demand occupations, industries and skill requirements can change from

year-to-year and from city-to-city. There are many external sources of labour market

information (LMI) that can provide insight into Hamilton’s changing conditions; however, they

do not provide the level of detail or relevancy that job seekers, policy makers, educational

institutions and other community agents need. The Census/National Household Survey, which

provides detailed industry and occupational information, is collected only once every five years

and can quickly become dated. Other sources of LMI, such as the monthly Labour Force Survey,

are collected on a more frequent basis, but are not as detailed or as localized as the Census.

There are knowledge gaps about Hamilton’s current local labour market conditions.

The Hire Learning Initiative (HLI) therefore aims to fill the LMI gaps for the Hamilton community

by finding out what Hamilton employers are looking for on a real-time basis.

Components of the Hire Learning Initiative

There are two main components of the HLI: quarterly job vacancy reports and an annual survey

sent out to Hamilton employers.

1. Help Wanted in Hamilton - Quarterly Job Vacancy Reports

Beginning in April 2013, WPH began contracting with Millier

Dickinson Blais and Vicinity Jobs Inc to receive quarterly job

vacancy statistics. Vicinity Jobs’ technology platform collects data

from online job postings including location, industry, occupation,

type of employment, duration of employment, and job posting

source. In addition to organizations’ websites, postings from all

major job boards are considered, including Monster.ca,

Workopolis.com, Jobbank.gc.ca, Indeed.ca, and Careerbuilder.ca,

as well as the classified section of local newspapers and

specialized job boards. Duplicated postings are removed from

the sample to ensure accuracy. While not all jobs are posted

online, the quarterly reports do provide insight into the types of

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jobs available in Hamilton over the past three months. These reports are presented as

infographics and are available on Workforce Planning Hamilton’s website.

2. Hire Learning Survey – Annual Employer Survey

In January 2014, WPH released the first annual Hire

Learning Survey (HLS). The survey was distributed with

support from community partners to employers across

the city to capture real-time local LMI such as current

and future hiring needs, skill and educational

requirements, turnover and recruitment difficulties. A

total of 166 employers across all industries and

employee-size ranges fully completed the survey. The

complete series of results can be also be found on Workforce Planning Hamilton’s website.

Purpose of this Review

Together, the quarterly job vacancy reports and the Hire Learning Survey give the Hamilton

community a sense of where the jobs are now and where the jobs are likely to be in the coming

year. This report will review any major trends that emerged through both components of the

HLI and show how to analyze the results together to find out the hiring trends in Hamilton from

April 2013 – March 2014.

As this was the first year of the Initiative, the time series analysis is somewhat limited. In future

reports, we will be able to compare year-over-year data to enrich our knowledge of how the

labour market is changing over time.

This review will look at the year April 2013 - March 2014 using both the job

vacancy statistics and the Hire Learning Survey results to provide an overall look

at hiring demand trends in Hamilton over the past year.

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Number of Postings Unemployment Rate

Overall Hiring Trends

Figure 1. Number of Online Job Postings (Hamilton) and Unemployment Rates (Hamilton CMA) by Month

Hiring demand in Hamilton fluctuated throughout the year, reaching a high of 2,508 postings in

October and a low of 1,728 postings in February. Much of the fluctuation can be attributed to

seasonal differences, with many businesses increasing hiring for the summer or winter holiday

months. The monthly unadjusted unemployment rate for the Hamilton CMA is included in

Figure 1 for reference.

Online job postings do not encompass all available positions in the community. The

Hire Learning Survey found that only 67% of respondents use online platforms to

advertise for open positions.

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Trends by Industry

Industry-specific job vacancy data is only available if the job posting could be matched to a

NAICS-coded employer from the Hamilton Business Directory database. The business directory

contains over 17,000 of Hamilton’s 30,000 total businesses. Employers were identified for 5,601

job ads – approximately 22% of all postings. The distribution of jobs between industries

calculated for this sample is applied to the complete data set.

Table 1. Industry by Job Ads (Vicinity Jobs) and Employment (Labour Force Survey)

Industry % of Job Ads % of Employment

(2013 Hamilton CMA)

Trade 26.1% 15.2%

Manufacturing 19.4% 12.6%

Health care and social assistance 11.6% 13.3%

Educational services 9.5% 8.3%

Finance, insurance, real estate and leasing 7.1% 7.0%

Public administration 4.8% 3.9%

Accommodation and food services 4.4% 6.7%

Professional, scientific and technical services 4.2% 7.8%

Transportation and warehousing 3.4% 4.2%

Other services 3.1% 3.6%

Construction 2.3% 7.7%

Business, building, other support services 1.9% 4.3%

Information, culture and recreation 1.4% 3.9%

Utilities 0.5% x

Agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting 0.1% 1.0%

Table 1 shows industries in order of online job postings. Industries with the most job ads were

also the industries that have higher employment in the Hamilton CMA. Trade, manufacturing,

health care, and educational services accounted for two-thirds of all online job ads throughout

the year.

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Top Industry Trends April 2013- March 2014

Figure 2. Number of Monthly Job Postings by Industry in Hamilton (Vicinity Jobs Inc)

Figure 2 shows the number of job postings each month for the top industries in Hamilton. There

are apparent hiring cycle differences between industries, with trade in particular having

fluctuation throughout the year.

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Trade Manufacturing

Health care and social assistance Educational services

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Trends by Occupation Table 2. Occupational Group by Number of Job Ads (Vicinity Jobs)

The most common type of job posting is for a sales or service position. Sales and service is the

most common occupational class by total employment, not only in Hamilton, but Ontario and

Canada as well. Many of sales and service jobs that are most heavily advertised are lower-

skilled and provide opportunity for workers to gain both experience and in-demand employable

skills.

The top advertised occupational groups were also mentioned by employers during the Hire

Learning Survey as occupations likely to be in the greatest demand over the next year. 1

Professionals, followed by sales and marketing, administrative and clerical, and technical, were

the occupational groups the highest number of respondents expected to increase in the next

year.

1 Occupational groups collected by Vicinity Jobs and the Hire Learning Survey are not exactly the same, but the

general nature of the occupational groups can be compared.

Occupational Group Number of

Postings % of All Postings

Sales and Service 4,638 18.4%

Management 2,956 11.7%

Other 2,900 11.5%

Help Wanted (including warehouse jobs) 2,426 9.6%

Trades, Transport, Construction 2,228 8.9%

Administrative and Legal 2,090 8.3%

Health 2,089 8.3%

Business, Finance, Accounting 1,753 7.0%

Engineers, Architects, IT, Natural Science 1,731 6.9%

Processing, Manufacturing, Utilities 1,197 4.8%

Social, Government, Religious Services 499 2.0%

Arts, Cultural, Recreation, Sports 331 1.3%

Education 329 1.3%

Farming, Fishing, Natural Resources 6 0.0% TOTAL

25,173

100%

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In-Demand Occupational Class Trends

Figure 4 shows how hiring demand changed for each of the four largest occupational groups

throughout the year. The occupational groups show similar fluctuations in the number of

postings throughout the year, which speaks to the seasonality of hiring patterns. Next year we

will be able to compare year-over-year data to assess each trend.

Looking to the 2014-2015 Hire Learning Initiative Workforce Planning Hamilton will continue the Hire Learning Initiative for the April 2014 –

March 2015 year. With a second year of online job vacancy statistics, we can begin to analyze

year-over-year time trends in each quarterly vacancy report. The time series analysis can enrich

our understanding of labour market trends by providing another context to which we can

compare the data.

WPH will also once again be releasing the Hire Learning Survey in January 2015 to gather in-

depth knowledge from employers not collected through other surveys. Similar to the job

vacancy reports for this year, we can begin to track changes over time with the second release

of the HLS.

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Sales and service

Management

Help wanted (including warehouse jobs)

Trades, transport, construction

Figure 3. Hiring Trends for the Top Occupational Groups by Number of Postings, April 2013

- March 2014