After adding 12,300 jobs in 2021, Halifax added another 11,600 in 2022. Since 2021, about 4,000 new jobs added were in the professional, scientific, and technical services industry alone taking the industry total to 27,700. However, this was only the third largest industry in Halifax. Despite losing 1,800 jobs, the health care and social assistance industry remained the second largest industry with 34,200 jobs. Wholesale and retail trade, the largest industry in Halifax, added 3,300 new jobs over the same time period for a total of 39,100 jobs.

Over the longer term, professional, scientific, and technical services (+43.5%) and finance, insurance, real estate, and leasing (+34.8%) were among the top three industries for growth, adding 8,400 and 4,900 jobs, respectively, since 2013. The construction industry had the largest growth rate over the decade (+44.0%) and the second-largest number of new positions, adding 6,600 jobs. Forestry, fishing, mining, quarrying, oil, and gas lost the most jobs (-1,100 positions), shrinking by 45.8%.

In terms of employment by occupational group, at the top of the list are positions like salesperson and cashier. Five of the 10 occupations with the largest 10-year growth are occupations employed primarily in professional, scientific, and technical services.

Labour scarcity has been a major issue across the country in 2022. Halifax’s job vacancy rate was 5.2% in Q4 2022 and averaged 5.1% for the entire year. The 12,425 vacant positions in Q4 were more than 4,500 above the five-year average. Both the vacancy rate and the number of vacant positions in 2022 were the highest Halifax has seen since recordkeeping began in 2015.

Halifax Partnership’s 2023 Business Confidence Survey asked businesses about their difficulties in hiring over the last two years: 60.7% of businesses said they faced either “a great deal of difficulty” or “some difficulty”. This is about 1.6 percentage points lower than in 2022 but 12.3 percentage points higher than in 2021. In contrast, 37.3% of businesses responded that they faced “very little difficulty” or “no difficulty” filling staff vacancies in the 2023 survey.

Thanks to inflation levels unseen in decades, a question on how inflation impacted certain business decisions was included in this year’s Business Confidence Survey. Not surprisingly, 70.0% of businesses in Halifax raised their prices more than usual, and 54.4% raised salaries and wages more than usual. One-third of businesses had to increase salaries on open job postings while 16.9% of businesses could not afford to fill vacant job positions. As the Bank of Canada raised interest rates over the course of the past year to quell inflation, 37.5% of businesses also had to cut back on other expenses due to increased debt-service payments.

The Workers’ Compensation Board of Nova Scotia reported 1.54 time-loss injuries per 100 covered workers in 2022, the second-lowest rate on record after 2020’s figure of 1.53. (The low rate in 2020 could have been influenced by pandemic-related health restrictions halting in-person work that year.) The injury rate has declined 21.4% since 2012 when it was 1.96.

Most workplace injuries in 2022 were attributed to bodily reaction and exertion (44.6%), which is the improper or repetitive use of a body part. Another 20.7% of injuries occurred during falls, 16.6% were due to contact with objects and equipment, and 9.7% came through exposure to harmful substances or environments. This leaves 8.4% attributable to other causes.

The number of workplace fatalities totaled 24 in 2022, up from 2021 but below the 2018-2022 average. There were nine acute fatalities, such as falls and drowning; eight fatalities from occupational diseases, which include health problems due to exposure to a workplace hazard that could take years to manifest; and seven fatalities due to health-related diseases, which may or may not be due to working conditions.