Quality of employment, 2023

Released: 2024-07-25

Today, Statistics Canada has released an update to its Quality of Employment in Canada publication. New articles entitled "Multiple jobholders, 2023," "Own-account worker rate, 2023," and "Long working hours, 2023," are now available, featuring recent data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and more detailed insights on the employment situation of racialized groups. An article on a new employabilty indicator entitled ''Employability, 2023" was also released for the first time, based on data from the November 2023 LFS supplement.

First launched in 2022, Quality of Employment in Canada provides data and insights based on the quality of employment framework of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The UNECE framework offers a comprehensive set of indicators that can help monitor changes in the different dimensions of quality of employment, such as safety and ethics, and working time quality, as well as better understand the employment situation of diverse groups.

Filipino workers have one of the highest multiple jobholding rates

Multiple jobholding refers to the practice of having more than one job at once. Multiple jobholding is often attributable to financial necessity and may reflect negatively on workers' well-being. After recording an unprecedented decline in 2020 during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the proportion of employed Canadians with more than one job had partly recovered from 2021 to 2023. In 2023, the multiple jobholding rate was 5.6%, just below the high of 5.8% recorded before the pandemic in 2018 and 2019.

Multiple jobholding was more prevalent among women (6.4%) than men (4.8%) in 2023. Youth, part-time workers, and employees with lower wages were also more likely to be multiple jobholders.

Chart 1 
Percentage of employed persons 15 years and over holding more than one job, by sex, 1976 to 2023

In 2023, 8.4% of Filipino workers held multiple jobs, compared with 5.3% of workers who are not racialized or Indigenous. The proportion of Filipino employees with earnings in their main job in the lowest weekly wage quartile (34.1%) was higher than the corresponding proportion among non-racialized employees (23.3%). This factor may have contributed to the higher multiple jobholding rate of Filipino workers.

Immigrants are less likely to agree they could easily find another job as well-paid as their current one

Employability relates to the ability of employees to easily find alternative employment. In November 2023, the LFS supplement included a question that asked paid employees how easy it would be for them, if they left or lost their current job, to find a new one with a similar salary.

In November 2023, nearly half (49.0%) of employees aged 15 to 69 years agreed or strongly agreed that it would be easy for them to find a job of a similar salary under such circumstances.

Employees born in Canada were more likely than immigrants to agree that it would be easy for them to find a similar paying job. In November 2023, over half (52.2%) of them agreed that it would be easy to find a job with a similar salary, compared with 41.0% of employees who were recent immigrants (who had landed up to 5 years earlier) and 41.7% of employees who were established immigrants (who had landed more than 10 years earlier).

Products

The "Quality of Employment in Canada" publication (Catalogue number14280001) has been updated with four additional articles.

Contact information

For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@statcan.gc.ca).