The 2025 hiring outlook
The other outlooks are in line with the first half of 2024, with 39% of respondents feeling optimistic, 36% feeling confident and 35% feeling hopeful. At this time last year, 70% of companies felt positive about their hiring outlook.
In addition, half of Canadian companies (51%) report plans to increase their employee count in the first half of 2025, while 41% plan to keep their headcount the same and only 8% plan to decrease their workforce.
This is also similar to the first half of 2024, when 49% planned to increase their employee count.
The primary drivers for increasing headcount include managing increased volumes of work (58%), filling newly created positions (45%), addressing employee turnover (38%), getting expertise in new areas (26%) and handling expansion into other categories or markets (26%).
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Get A QuoteOptimism balanced with challenges
Interestingly, while these drivers remain similar to last year, there has been a significant rise in the number of companies who are increasing their employee count to manage work caused by artificial intelligence concerns, from 10% in the first half of 2024 to 18% now.
“The cost per employee for businesses has drastically increased,” said Pollington. “Worker expectations, market factors, minimum wage hikes, increased demands for benefits and perks, retention strategies, turnover costs and the time and resources needed to train new employees have all driven these costs higher.”
“Companies are also dealing with the lack of skilled workers in the market which has forced them to focus more on training and development, as well as long-term succession planning. Employers are spending significant time and energy solving these issues.”
Survey methodology
The Job Insights survey was conducted online within Canada by The Harris Poll on behalf of Express Employment Professionals between November 11 to 26 of this year, among 505 Canadian hiring decision-makers.
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