The Canadian job market showed more signs that it may be cooling off as companies slow or freeze hiring plans, with Statistics Canada reporting that job vacancies are at the lowest point in almost eight years.
That comes as the Canadian job market continues to adapt to a rapidly changing landscape, as the trade war and U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policies force some businesses to pivot in order to help minimize the impacts, including higher costs.
Companies are mostly focused on maintaining their current business operations rather than setting long-term goals to expand due to the “uncertainty” echoed by many economists and policymakers surrounding international trade — including a pending deal between Canada and the U.S.
“If you’re an organization and you don’t have clarity on what your business is going to look like tomorrow or next month or next quarter, you’re not going to be risking adding any type of cost into the businesses,” says Cal Jungwirth, director of permanent placement services at Robert Half.
“I’m not saying no one is hiring out there, but as a general trend, yeah, until organizations have a better feel of what the economy is going to look like, they’re going to continue to be very cautious.”
On Thursday, Statistics Canada released new job market data, which some experts say reflects the broader business sentiment surrounding the trade war.
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According to the agency, the number of job vacancies, meaning job openings listed by businesses that have yet to be filled, fell in May of 2025 by 20,400, or 4.1 per cent, compared to the previous month, and that’s after a 3.4 per cent drop in April.
Compared to the same month in 2024, the total number of job vacancies in May of 2025 fell by nearly 16 per cent.
Statistics Canada also says that with May’s reported job vacancies totalling 478,200, it is the lowest level recorded since October 2017.
“Organizations are not hiring at the levels that they were to begin the year, and we’re not seeing right now just simple turnover or churn,” says Jungwirth.
“So when an individual stays (at a job) where they’re at, versus if they were looking to leave and make a move, when they leave, that opens up a vacancy and creates jobs in the marketplace. If they don’t leave their current role, the vacancy is not created. So, it’s kind of a double whammy.”
New research from Robert Half based on survey data shows 26 per cent of workers plan to look for a new job in the second half of the year, and that’s down from 38 per cent near the start of 2025.
“Hiring appetite and recruiting activity are inherently forward-looking endeavours. You’re planning for the workforce of your future, you have a sense of what your attrition might be, people leaving or layoffs, and then the workers you want to add,” says senior economist Brendon Bernard at Indeed.
“I definitely think this is part of a relatively pessimistic environment going on in Canada right now. It’s a difficult market for job seekers.”
Bernard also says the consistent reports showing lower job vacancies in recent months is “not a new trend,” and that the trade war creating this “pessimistic environment” felt by some Canadian businesses may not be the only factor contributing to the declines.
“While the numbers (of job vacancies) have slipped over the past few months, they’ve also come down a lot just in general from their peaks in 2022, and the job vacancy rate is now a bit below where it was pre-pandemic,” says Bernard.
“I think 2022 was an exceptional period for the economy and the labour market in a lot of different ways. So we would expect that to cool off to some degree.”
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