391,300 Canadians remain employed but work zero hours
Canadian service workers are faring even worse during the pandemic than previously thought with hundreds of thousands of those who still have jobs not actually putting in any hours at all, and a grim holiday season could add to the pain.
Canada has so far clawed back nearly 80 per cent of the jobs lost to the COVID-19 crisis, official data shows. But a deeper analysis reveals that the ranks of the underemployed — people who are working less than half their usual hours, or none at all — have swelled to well above February levels.
There are 391,300 Canadians employed but working zero hours because of the pandemic, data provided to Reuters shows, and another 42,100 working less than half their usual hours. The vast majority of these workers are in the hard-hit service sector.
“You take a look at a restaurant or a barber: They're operating, but they're nowhere near capacity,” said Royce Mendes, senior economist at CIBC Capital Markets. “So there is a significant amount of unused labour.”
Under-employment, like unemployment, spiked across Canada in the spring as businesses were shuttered to curb the spread of COVID-19. Underemployment remains more than 50 per cent above pre-pandemic levels, highlighting the unevenness of the recovery.
“There's a whole category of workers who don't indicate they have actually been laid off, but they might not have a business that is open to show up at,” said Brendon Bernard, an economist with online job-search firm Indeed Canada.
The large increase in the pandemic likely reflects workers whose workplace is temporarily closed or restricted, along with those who are not working due to childcare issues or health concerns, economists say.
Many of these workers are being kept on payrolls by Canada's emergency wage subsidy, which allows
businesses to retain staff even if they have no hours for them to work.