The Canadian economy has been a benchmark for the rest of the world ever since the Great Recession. We have a strong financial system, an educated worker class, and solid resources & manufacturing base.

However, November jobs data posted the largest job loss in the country since 2009, with unemployment rate jumping to 5.9 percent from 5.5 percent in October. Labour participation rate (the number of working age adults with jobs or actively looking for jobs) has also inched lower to 65.6%.

Coupled with a global slowdown and on-going trade tensions, what does this all mean for job seekers?

It’s yet unclear whether the global macro events will lead to another recession, however it is prudent to prepare in case of such an event.

Here are some common sense suggestions:

1. Top up your reserve fund. The general wisdom is to have 3 months of spending saved up. To be conservative, target 6 months.
2. Find ways to cut spending. Does anyone really need a $15 organic anti-oxidant enriched kale juice? Eat an apple instead.
3. Pay down high-interest debt.
4. Update your resume in case of layoffs.
5. Supplement your income with a side-hustle.

In today’s world, it’s not survival of the fittest, but survival of the most prepared.

The holiday season is upon us, and everyone is busy with shopping, parties and family gatherings. No one is thinking about hiring…or are they?

In fact, studies show that companies hire more people in January and February than any other month of the year. This is usually due to several reasons.

1. Hiring managers receiving their budget for the new year and therefore are able to increase headcounts
2. Employees wait for their Christmas bonus before quitting, hence the rush for exits in January, leading to a subsequent wave of hiring
3. Projects on hold during the holidays are now back in full swing, along with the need for people
4. Backlog of hiring from the previous year as hiring managers and HR personnel return from vacations

All of the above give someone looking for work more reason to pause festivities and start looking for work now. In fact, it is the best time to land a new job. According to Forbes magazine, the top reasons to job hunt in December are:

1. Less competition
2. Hiring managers are thinking about next year’s projects and needs
3. Greater opportunities for networking as most people are gathering for holiday parties
4. Lots of temporary work available around the holidays
5. Let’s face it, people are a bit nicer and feeling a bit more charitable during the holiday season

All the more reason to gear up your job search during the holidays. So what are you waiting for? Start your search now!

I recently watched a documentary on Andrew Carnegie, the U.S. steel tycoon of the late 19th century. It detailed his life as a poor young immigrant from Scotland, who built one of the biggest companies in the world. He’s now largely remembered as being both the wealthiest man of his time and a great philanthropist, whose credits include the prestigious Carnegie Hall and Carnegie Mellon University.

But interestingly there was a dark side to this great man. His company, Carnegie Steel in Pittsburgh, was the setting of one of the bloodiest strikes in U.S. history, the Homestead Strike in 1892, which lasted 143 days, and resulted in the death of ten men. One of the reasons of the strike was the company’s decision to decrease wages when it was making record profits. Benefiting from the industrial revolution, Carnegie and his chairman Henry Clay Frick were both in favor of replacing human workers with machines, saying that machines don’t demand wage increases and never sleep.

The industrial revolution saw the replacement of low-skilled human workers by steam engines and machines. Manufacturing being the first ones to bear the brunt of this change. Now in the age of AI (artificial intelligence), and low-skilled workers are again the first ones being impacted. Wal-mart and other supermarkets are already testing robots used to greet people and check inventory on shelves. Human greeters are replaced with robot counterparts, who amuse children and adults alike. Self checkouts went from an annoying presence in McDonald’s to proliferating within every major retailer.

There are already robotic chefs and baristas being tested. While their hefty price-tags keep most retailers away, it’s only a matter of time before these technology become cheap enough for mass consumption.

The advancements in automation leave low-skilled workers in a tough spot, resulting in an oversupply of labour, stagnating wages for decades, and creating a huge boom in the post-secondary education, as workers scramble to become better educated and more qualified for jobs that are less likely to be replaced by machines.

Politicians like Elizabeth Warran in the U.S. are calling for higher corporate taxes and a new wealth tax in an attempt to shrink the growing wealth gap. While this may appeal to some, in the end corporations and the wealthy will always figure out a loophole. And it’s always better to reward than to punish. Perhaps a dual reward/penalty system could work. For example, for every job that a company cuts, as long as the company is in profit, it should pay a tax equivalent to 5 years salary as compensation for social benefits the now unemployed person will claim. And for every new job a business creates, it can gain a tax incentive equivalent to 5% of the salary for the position, effectively making it cheaper to employ human labour. Hopefully this will help normalize the adjustments needed in a future world driven by A.I.

But with a painting created by A.I. selling for over $430,000 at auction, is any industry truly safe?

With the advance of tech-enabled food delivery systems like Uber Eats and DoorDash, there seems to be an endless array of choices for dining-in. But there is something happening in the restaurant industry, impacting both smaller restaurants and larger chains: more and more workers are shying away from jobs in restaurants that were once easily filled.

We dive into the reasons, which can be segmented into three areas.

1. Rising cost of labour – The Province of Ontario raised its minimum wage to $14/hr in 2018. The minimum wage was only $11.60 in 2017. Such a drastic increase (over 20% in one year) has led to increased competition within the near-minimum wage group. All of a sudden, restaurants that were paying a good 1.5x over minimum wage (i.e. $17/hr) is now in the near-minimum wage sector. In this range they are competing for talent with much easier retail jobs. Who wants to sweat over a hot fire 8 hours a day if they can sit behind a counter and earn a similar wage?
2. Hard work – being a cook or waiter/waitress is hard work. It requires years of training, certifications, expertise, customer-service skills, organization, and nose-to-the-grind hard work. It’s much harder to work in a restaurant, with much more pressure than in an office or a shop. Without adequate compensation, it’s no wonder most people don’t prefer it.
3. Foodie culture – nowadays everyone is a self-claimed Foodie. Along with this title, more people are increasingly demanding about their food, especially when eating out. In any restaurant, the Taste, Service, Presentation, Atmosphere and Value are constantly being judged and rated on the likes of Yelp and Tripadvisor. This culture of indulgence increases the pressure on restaurateurs to provide the best dishes at a reasonable price. With the aforementioned minimum wage hikes, the restaurant is caught between a rock and a hard place, unable to pass on the majority of price increases for fear of losing clientele. The added volume from the likes of Uber Eats increases revenue, but also increases the stress on the already-pressured staff.

For small restaurants, this is especially evident as turnover increases and owners and managers find it more and more common to having to step in themselves to fill the gap. Dishwasher and line cooks are especially prone to turnover and no shows. These are tough jobs with limited room to grow, and often do not enjoy the benefit of tips. Something will have to change in the industry. Either wages will have to increase substantially (meaning higher costs for patrons), or restaurants will have to start to explore automation. Either way, the industry will have serious staffing gaps in the meantime.