Canadians Feel They Have More Job Security Than Before

Canada’s Global Competitiveness Ranking Improves

Nearly half of Canada’s current workforce feels more secure in their roles than they did one year ago, according to findings released this week. Although this does not technically constitute a majority, the numbers are in favour of the proposition that Canadians feel they have more job security than before, with 38 percent feeling that they were less secure compared to 46% who feel more secure. It is a sign that people are still divided on the subject of the economy and employment, but that optimism is continuing to creep upward in the light of positive noises at home and abroad. As we wait to see how the recovery continues, it would be chutzpah to suggest that the findings of the recent Harris-Decima poll proved that we were out of the woods, but good news is good news.

The positive feeling is more pronounced among people working in the public sector, of whom 53% said they felt more secure in their employment compared to 42% who felt more secure in the private sector. This is natural, as the companies which are going bankrupt and the plants and offices which are being closed down tend to be private sector entities. With a national unemployment rate of 8.6% expected to rise in the weeks to come, private sector workers still nurse understandable doubts that their jobs are safe. However, the prevailing opinion is that most companies with substantive cuts to make have already made the bulk of those cuts and have now downsized to a reasonable level.

Of the 1,009 people surveyed, some 33% said that they felt job security was the top perk in a job – nearly exactly a third of the group. Almost as many (31%) said that work/life balance was the most important thing in any job. Taking these two groups together it could be said that almost two-thirds of the Canadians surveyed felt that comfort and confidence played a big part in their reasons for doing their job. With 15% citing a secure pension and 12% a generous salary, those feeling that remuneration was the important part of a job was just over a quarter. Whether everyone responding was being entirely honest with the researcher and themselves is a question for another day, however it would appear that a sense of uncertainty in the last couple of years has caused people to reassess priorities.

Other interesting results to emerge from the survey had much to do with the divisions between public and private sector workers. When asked whether government workers were overpaid, 64% of the private sector said they were while only 39% of public sector workers agreed. The reasons for this strength of feeling among the private sector may well be that they resent their taxes being spent on workers who they very much (83%) feel do an excessive amount of “paper pushing”. 72% of public sector workers agreed that their jobs involved a lot of administrative work, but did not feel in such great numbers that it should mean they have to take a pay cut.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Canada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.