As the employment landscape continues to evolve due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re taking a look this month at work from home jobs, as well as what occupations are in-demand, which employers are hiring, and the skills that employers are looking for in Ontario. The analysis draws from Workforce WindsorEssex’s unique data source which covers job postings from across the province (excluding the City of Toronto and the far north-eastern region).
According to data collected from unique job postings in Ontario the month of October, 1.93 percent of job postings included either a full-time or hybrid work from home option based on employers listing “work from home” in their postings (3,583 out of 184,840 total active job postings), spanning a total of 227 different occupations. While 1.93 percent may seem low, especially when 4.2 million Canadians worked from home in October 2021, it’s important to note that these are incremental, new jobs, not the percent of workers employed in a full-time or hybrid work from home model. Active job postings are defined as those postings that were accepting applications in the month of October.
The 10 most in-demand work from home occupations compared to the 10 most in-demand jobs overall by number of active job postings were as follows:
Based on the types of occupations listed as the 10 most in-demand work from home jobs, we can assume that a large portion of these jobs might eventually be transitioned to an office environment, spanning customer service, administration, insurance, marketing, computer programming, and human resources.
The top-10 companies hiring work from home employees were as follows:
In terms of the knowledge, skills, tools, and technologies that employers are looking for in their work from home employees, 3,392 unique skills were identified throughout the 3,665 active work from home job postings. In comparison, there were 9,825 unique knowledge, skills, tools, and technologies identified overall in the 184,840 total active job postings across Ontario. The top-20 knowledge, skills, tools, and technologies identified in active work from home job postings versus identified in overall active job postings for October 2021 were as follows:
The lists of knowledge, skills, tools, and technologies do not differ greatly; however, we do see writing and research more sought after in work from home positions. There is also an emphasis on communication and attention to detail.
We also found that an increasing number of employers mention “vaccination” in their job postings. Approximately 16,000 active job postings (8.65 percent of all active job postings) included the term.
Getting back to overall job postings, the 10 most in-demand occupations in October 2021 compared to the previous month were as follows:
Together, these top-10 in-demand occupations constitute just over one-third of all job postings (63,091 job postings or 34.13 percent) in the regions. The number of active job postings increased by 10,459 in October relative to September for a total of 184,840, compared to 174,463 active job postings in September).
Certain occupations experienced a large bump in the number of active job postings for October, with Material Handlers seeing an increase of 3,395 (up 28.45 percent) in postings. Material Handlers are largely employed in the Transportation and Warehousing sector and move, load, and unload materials by hand or using a variety of material handling equipment.
The top-10 companies hiring were as follows:
Many in the top-10 companies hiring in the month of October are hiring Material Handlers, particularly as the holiday months are quickly approaching and these employers anticipate an earlier busy season due to widely-reported supply chain issues. We can see Amazon, Walmart Canada, and Home Depot in particular have increased their hiring efforts in October. This follows the ongoing trend of employers ramping up hiring for this capacity in the month of October. In Statistics Canada’s data for employment according to industry, 377,000 are employed in the Transportation and Warehousing sector in October 2021, up 8.77 percent from 346,600 in October 2020 and down 4.69 percent from 394,700 in October 2019.
For more information about Workforce WindsorEssex and their valuable LMI, please visit workforcewindsoressex.com.
