Canadian employers adjusted to the global economic recession of 2008-2009 by reducing hiring and, to a lesser extent, increasing layoffs, according to a new StatsCan study. Hiring rates in parts of Western Canada fell more than in the rest of the country.

The study, released on Monday, provides a snapshot of employment trends across Canada from 2003 to 2013. 

It looked at workers aged 18 to 64, and gives estimates of hiring and layoff rates at the national, provincial and territorial, and sub-provincial levels. The study looked particularly closely at hiring and layoff rates within 69 economic regions across Canada.

It found that hiring rates fell more in Western Canada during the recession than in other provinces. For example, hiring rates fell by at least seven percentage points from 2007 to 2009 in northern B.C., and in all economic regions of Alberta, with the exception of Lethbridge-Medicine Hat.

By comparison, all of the economic regions in Ontario recorded a decline in hiring rates of four percentage points or less, and most regions in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces recorded a drop of 4.5 percentage points or less.

From 2007 to 2009, layoff rates increased more in Western Canada and in some parts of the Atlantic provinces than they did elsewhere.

Nationwide, the hiring rate declined by 3.6 percent points from 2007 to 2009 (21.6 per cent to 18 per cent), while the layoff rate slightly increased from 5.3 per cent in 2007 to 6.6 per cent in 2009.

The study also found the following, more generally from 2003 to 2013:

  • Hiring and layoff rates are sizeable relative to the net employment growth. For example, from 2003 to 2013, an average of 2.7 million employees were hired each year, while close to 0.8 million were laid off. These flows exceeded the annual net change in employment, which averaged about 170,000 during that period.
  • Layoff rates differed across provinces more than hiring rates. For example, annual layoff rates in Newfoundland and Labrador averaged 15.7 per cent from 2003 to 2013, more than three times the layoff rate in Alberta (5.1 per cent), Saskatchewan (4.9 per cent), Ontario (4.7 per cent), and Manitoba (4.4 per cent). However, the annual hiring rate in Newfoundland and Labrador (25 per cent) was only slightly higher than in Saskatchewan (21.4 per cent), and nearly identical to Alberta's (24.8 per cent).
  • Economic regions across Canada have varied hiring and layoff rates. For example, 10 economic regions, mostly located in the Atlantic provinces and in northern or eastern Quebec, had both high hiring rates and high layoff rates.
  • Layoff rates ranged from a low of 3.9 per cent in Ottawa to a high of 25.4 per cent in the economic region of South Coast-Burin Peninsula and Notre Dam-Central Bonavista Bay in Newfoundland and Labrador.
  • Annual hiring rates ranged from a low of 17 per cent in the Manitoba region of Interlake to a high of 30.5 per cent in the Alberta region of Wood Buffalo-Cold Lake.
  • Some economic regions had dynamic labour markets, meaning they had relatively high hiring rates and low layoff rates. For example, average hiring rates exceeded 22 per cent and layoff rates were less than 5.5 per cent in the region of Southwest Manitoba, along with Lethbridge- Medicine Hat, Camrose-Drumheller, Calgary and Edmonton (all located in Alberta).