Why Canadian Workers And Employers Are Not Connecting

By Sherri Claydon | Vancouver City News | September 9, 2026 Subscription to Vancouver City News is Free

I heard two very different versions of Canada's labour market in the same day.

An employer tells me they cannot find anyone. Then a capable, experienced person tells me they cannot get an interview.

I have spent years working between employers and candidates. It is tempting to assume that one side must be getting the labour market wrong, but what if neither is wrong?

Canada now has roughly three unemployed people for every job vacancy, while some positions remain open for months. There is no single explanation for that contradiction, but it starts to make more sense when we look at what "can't find anyone" can actually mean.

One Labour Market Can Hold Two Very Different Realities

Canada's latest employment numbers do not describe a widespread labour shortage. Employment fell by approximately 42,000 in August after cumulative gains of approximately 181,000 between April and July. The national unemployment rate remained at 6.4%. In British Columbia, unemployment increased from 6.2% in July to 6.5% in August.

For job seekers, one number is particularly important. Approximately 24% of unemployed Canadians had been looking for work continuously for at least 27 weeks in August. Before the pandemic, from 2017 to 2019, the average was 17.1%.

A difficult job search is not necessarily reliable evidence of someone's professional value. More Canadians are remaining unemployed for extended periods than was typical before the pandemic.

By The Numbers

Statistics Canada's first-quarter 2026 job vacancy data captures the contradiction particularly well. There were approximately three unemployed Canadians for every job vacancy. Among people with bachelor's degrees or higher, the ratio was approximately five unemployed people for every vacancy requiring that level of education. Vacancies requiring a bachelor's degree or higher were also down 6.9% from a year earlier.

At the same time, 28% of Canadian job vacancies had been open for at least 90 days. That proportion was down from 31.2% a year earlier. Statistics Canada noted that the decline indicated employers were having fewer difficulties filling available positions.

Still, several people can be unemployed for every available job while some jobs remain open for months. So what does an employer actually mean when they say they "can't find anyone"?

"We Can't Find Anyone" Can Mean Very Different Things

Statistics Canada's Canadian Survey on Business Conditions offers some insight. In the first quarter of 2026, 35.1% of Canadian businesses reported that they had experienced difficulty finding candidates with the skills needed for their roles during the previous 12 months.

Statistics Canada then asked those businesses what their main difficulty had been:

45.9% identified too few applicants or too few people interested in that type of work.
15.6% identified candidates' qualifications, credentials or educational backgrounds not being recognized in their jurisdiction.
11.1% identified wages and compensation below those offered by similar businesses or organizations.
7.3% identified the geographic location of the business or organization.
Just 4.7% identified a lack of qualified or experienced candidates as the main difficulty.

The distinction matters. An employer struggling to hire may be facing a genuine shortage of a particular capability, but difficulty hiring can also reflect applicant interest, compensation, geography or credential recognition.

And in some cases, it may be worth asking another question: have we confused a shortage of exact matches with a shortage of capability?

"Has Done It" Versus "Can Do It"

There are jobs where exact experience matters. Some skills must exist on day one, and employers have good reasons for requiring them. There are also roles where people can bring relevant skills from another industry, a different environment or a career path that does not look identical on paper.

That distinction becomes particularly interesting in a selective hiring market. Robert Half surveyed more than 1,360 Canadian hiring managers and found that 53% said finding skilled professionals had become more difficult than a year earlier. This is professional hiring research from a staffing company, rather than a picture of the entire Canadian labour market.

When employers want someone who can contribute quickly, familiar experience can appear to reduce risk. Someone who has already done a similar job, in the same industry or in a similar environment, is easier to recognize as a match. Capability can be harder to see. Someone may not have done this exact job, but their experience may demonstrate that they can solve the problems the role requires.

The difference is subtle but important: has done it versus can do it.

Technology may be adding another complication. Robert Half reports that 64% of surveyed business leaders are experiencing hiring issues associated with AI-generated applications, including difficulty identifying authentic resumes and additional time spent verifying candidate credentials.

That does not establish that AI-generated applications are causing Canada's broader hiring mismatch. It does raise a question worth watching: if employers become less confident in what applications tell them, will familiar experience become even more important as evidence of capability?

There Is Another Side To The Story

Not every difficult job search is evidence of a matching problem. The Bank of Canada reported in its second-quarter Business Outlook Survey that most firms continued to have enough physical capacity and workforce to meet demand. Reports of binding labour shortages declined, and employment intentions remained below their historical average.

That means some job seekers are struggling for a much simpler reason: many employers are not hiring very aggressively.

This is why broad statements about "the labour market" can be misleading. Available workers are not one interchangeable pool, and neither are available jobs.

Why It Matters

Perhaps the contradiction becomes easier to understand once we stop talking about the labour market as though it were one pool of people competing for one pool of jobs.

Canada can have unused capability and unmet need at the same time. The gaps can involve technical skills, experience, compensation, geography, credentials or working conditions. Sometimes the issue is simpler: employers are cautious and are not hiring enough people to absorb everyone looking for work.

There may also be another gap worth paying attention to: the difference between capability and evidence of capability.

For employers, that creates a useful question: what genuinely has to be there on day one? There will always be positions where specific experience, credentials or technical skills are essential. When they are not, however, "has done it before" may not always be the best measure of "could do it well."

I have seen what can happen when employers become open to that distinction. The candidate who checks the most boxes on paper is not always the person who ultimately brings the most to the team. Clients who have been willing to consider people with different backgrounds and ways of thinking have sometimes found strengths they were not originally looking for, including new approaches to problems and perspectives that were missing from the existing team.

Candidates face a different challenge. Employers control the hiring criteria and selection process, but candidates still have to make their capability visible within it. The question is not simply how to show what they have done, but how to make it easier for an employer to understand what that experience enables them to do next.

None of this solves a softer hiring market or genuine skills shortages. It does suggest there is room to improve how we recognize capability when it is already there.

An employer can truthfully say, "I cannot find the person I need," while a highly capable candidate truthfully says, "No one will interview me." Neither person necessarily has to be wrong.

Perhaps the opportunity is not to lower the bar, but to become more thoughtful about what the bar is actually measuring.

By Sherri Claydon | Vancouver City News LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherriclaydon

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