Canada suffering from labour shortage, businesses struggling to pay staff: Report

Recent data from Statistics Canada shows that that labour shortages have increased nationwide, particularly among low-paying jobs.

This report will be bad news for the federal government who has been struggling to get Canadians back to work since CERB. As a consequence of this, businesses are having to massively increase their wages to get employees.

A lot of major companies like McDonald's, Rogers, and Indigo Park are advertising their signing bonus to attract staff, according to the CBC. McDonald's, for instance, is offering $200 for new employees.

Once Economist at McGill University in Montreal said that "it's not a bad outcome in the economy, if we have a lot of productive jobs out there and wages have to go up."

Despite this, Canada's labour shortage continues to harm the economy as over half of small Canadian businesses struggle to find staff.

This news comes in the wake of small businesses across the country hiking their wages to attract new staff. The Royal Bank of Canada said that the number of job vacancies increased by 22 percent this summer.

Despite this, the unemployment rate in Canada is at 6.7 percent, meaning Canadians are choosing simply not to work even with these wage hikes.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) discovered that 55 percent of small businesses do not have the staff to run their stores.

Another 16 percent said that the labour shortage allows them to run their stores but at a significant loss.