Key Points

  • The share of Canadians actively looking for work ticked down in November, from 30% to 28%, with somewhat less job search activity among those both working and not. 
  • Urgent unemployed job search remained elevated in November despite edging down from October levels, when it jumped prior to the wind-down of the Canada Recovery Benefit.  
  • Job seeker confidence in finding new work is stronger in November than during the summer, fitting with the recent string of solid employment numbers reported in the Labour Force Survey. 

Canadian job search activity ticked down in November according to the latest Indeed Job Search Survey. Overall, 28% of adults aged 18 to 64 surveyed between November 8-25 reported actively looking for work, a statistically significant decrease from the 30% on the job hunt in October. 

Bar chart titled “Canadian job search falls back slightly in November.”
Bar chart titled “Canadian job search falls back slightly in November.” With a vertical axis ranging from 0% to 40%, Indeed tracked the job search status among Canadians, both employed and non-employed together, between July and November 2021 with different coloured sections of each bar representing “searching, not urgently” and “searching, urgently.” As of November 2021, the share actively searching was 28%, down slightly from 30% in October.

Search activity eased among both those working and not, though the decline was only statistically significant among those out of work. The share of jobless Canadians actively looking for work fell back to 35% from 39% in October, though it remains up from 32% in September, reflecting still elevated levels of urgent unemployed search. Meanwhile, the share of employed workers on the job hunt ticked down from 26% to 25%. 

Bar chart titled “Urgent unemployed job search stays elevated in November”
Bar chart titled “Urgent unemployed job search stays elevated in November.” With a vertical axis ranging from 0% to 40%, Indeed compared the job search status of Canadians by employment status between July and November 2021 with different coloured sections of each bar representing “searching, not urgently” and “searching, urgently.” As of November 2021, search activity among those employed ticked down from 26% in October to 25%, while among the jobless it eased from 39% to 35%, but remained higher than the 32% in September. 

Urgency remains up post-Canada Recovery Benefit

The wind-down of the Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) on October 23, is a likely contributor to the rise in urgency among unemployed job seekers. This shift has been especially substantial among those who’ve been looking for work for an extended period. In November, 70% of unemployed job seekers who’d been searching for over six months described their search as urgent, well above the 41% to 51% range during the third quarter. Meanwhile, roughly half or those who’d been searching for six months or less described their search as urgent, up from between 40% during the summer. 

While there appears to have been a notable impact from the end of the CRB on respondents’ job search patterns, it’s less clear how impactful the end of the program was in the November Labour Force Survey. Long-term unemployment did see a noticeable decline, but Statistics Canada also reports just 4.9% of all those who entered employment in November were previously receiving the benefit.

Job seeker confidence higher than the summer

The end of the CRB further raises the importance of Canada maintaining strong employment gains in the months ahead. Job seeker confidence in finding new work is decidedly higher among employed job seekers, with 55% in November at least somewhat confident they can find a job in the next month, while 39% of the unemployed feel the same. Nonetheless, both shares are above where they stood mid-summer, although the difference compared to July levels is only statistically significant among those currently employed. With Canadian job postings on Indeed continuously hitting new highs, opportunities for new work are fairly abundant. 

Line graph titled “Job seeker confidence higher than in the summer.”
Line graph titled “Job seeker confidence higher than in the summer.” With a vertical axis ranging from 20% to 70%, Indeed compared the share of job seekers confident they can find a job in the next month by employment status between July and November 2021 with different coloured lines representing employed and not employed. As of November 2021, 55% of respondents currently working but seeking new work either agreed or strongly agreed that they were confident they “can find a new job in the next month,” up from 47% in July 2021, while 39% of unemployed job seekers were confident in November, up from 35% in July.

Methodology

This blog post is based on separate online surveys of 4,000 Canadian adults ages 18-64 conducted on July 15-20, August 9-23, September 13-29, October 11-20, and November 8-25. The survey was conducted among various general population survey panel audiences. Indeed awareness, use, or otherwise was not a requirement for participation. There was no mention of Indeed or any other job sites in the survey and respondents were not aware that the survey was sponsored by Indeed. 

Weights were applied to match respondent distributions across age, educational attainment, and time spent in Canada with the Labour Force Survey public-use microfile data from January 2021 through June 2021. Due to a slight change in methodology in calculating population weights, numbers may not exactly match prior reports.