In this edition:
- Soft sales and weak consumer demand top business fears heading into 2025
- St. Catharines, Niagara Falls lag behind housing targets, province’s figures show
- Canada Post now accepting commercial mail, customers may experience delays
- Number of unfilled jobs in Canada falls to 513,000 as labour market cools
- Focus on Human Resources
Did you know you can get the GNCC’s Daily Update emailed to you? Click here to sign up.
Photo credit: wichayada / Adobe Stock
Soft sales and weak consumer demand top business fears heading into 2025
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s Business Data Lab has released its Business Insights Quarterly publication for Q4 2024, revealing another decline in near-term business sentiment, with a second consecutive drop in the Business Expectations Index. While the good news is that Canadian businesses generally anticipate fewer disruptions in the near term from costs, labour, finance and supply chains, the report highlights growing concerns about soft sales and weak consumer demand.
With the outlook growing darker, Canadian businesses face a more pessimistic and highly uncertain path into 2025.
Photo credit: karamysh / Adobe Stock
St. Catharines, Niagara Falls lag behind housing targets, province’s figures show
As Niagara’s two largest municipalities continue to lag behind provincial government targets for new home construction, builders are blaming development charges and the housing market for delays in building homes.
According to the province’s “housing tracker” website, St. Catharines and Niagara Falls — and the majority of the 50 municipalities included on the list provincewide — have not met targets for new home construction starts this year.
Picture credit: Blacqbook / Adobe Stock
Canada Post now accepting commercial mail, but customers may experience lineups and delays
Canada Post is now accepting commercial inductions into its network following the weeks-long strike. The Crown corporation began accepting commercial mail on Thursday, Dec. 19.
On Friday, Dec. 13, federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon announced he was asking the Canada Industrial Relations Board to send 55,000 Canada Post employees back to work, ending the four-week strike.
Photo credit: Pixel-Shot / Adobe Stock
Number of unfilled jobs in Canada falls to 513,000 as labour market continues to cool
The number of job vacancies decreased by 15,000 (-2.8%) to 513,200 in October, following little change in September and a decrease of 16,700 (-3.1%) in August. The number of job vacancies was down by nearly half (-48.9%) from the peak of over one million reached in May 2022.
There were 2.8 unemployed persons for every job vacancy in October 2024, up from 2.7 in the previous month. Since October 2023, the unemployment-to-job vacancy ratio rose from 1.8 to 2.8, reflecting the cooling of labour market conditions over this period.
Did you know?
Canada’s emissions have now dropped to their lowest level in 27 years.
Focus on Human Resources
Out-of-office emails are getting a refresh — and helping employees set work-life boundaries
An out-of-office email used to only need a few things — the fact that you’re away from work, what day you’ll return and who to contact in the meantime.
Not anymore.
Rather than a copy-and-paste message, employees have given the humble out-of-office reply a revamp.
“Until Thursday, just pretend I don’t exist,” reads one shared by Canadian content creator Laura Whaley. She gathered examples submitted by her millions of followers.
Through the Daily Updates, the GNCC aims to deliver important business news in a timely manner. We disseminate all news and information we feel will be important to businesses. Inclusion in the Daily Update is not an endorsement by the GNCC.
