Work in progress: Women in Canada’s changing post-pandemic labour market: Bumpy Ride series, spring 2024 update

The opinions and recommendations in this report, and any errors, are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders of this report. [...] By December 2022, most industries in the “rest of the economy” had recouped their pandemic losses, with the exception of administrative services (-1.0 per cent), real estate (-0.5 per cent) and wholesale trade (-0.5 per cent).41 The respective change in employment in “rest of the economy” industries between 2019 and 2022 was roughly the same—at 5.7 per cent. [...] But in 2021 and 2022, the jobs on offer in sectors like professional services and the care economy caught up with the growing numbers of university-educated women, combining to push up their rates of employment to 82.5 per cent in 2022.53 The post-pandemic labour market also boosted the fortunes of university-educated men. [...] In 2020, women made up the majority of workers in the four industries that were especially hard hit by pandemic-related closures and, predictably, accounted for the majority of employment losses—both initially in 2020 at the height of the emergency and during the on-again- off-again recovery that followed. [...] The workers surveyed in the Manitoba case study noted the growing presence of private agency staff on the floors in long-term care facilities.93 Hospitals are turning to these same agencies to cover shifts—running up staffing costs exponentially to meet the demands of a growing population.94 It is important to note the significant role that immigration is playing in the expansion of the care econo.