Whether public or private, primary, secondary or tertiary sectors, with less than 20 employees or more than 100, Canadian companies can, for one reason or another, need to hire labour under a temporary contract. What are the characteristics of these companies and the contracts they offer?
Canadian companies characteristics
Public and private
Whether the contracts are permanent or temporary, there are always more of them in the private sector than in the public sector. However, the proportion of temporary contracts in the public sector (31%) – compared to 69% in the private sector – is higher than the proportion of permanent contracts in the public sector (23%) – compared to 77% in the private sector.
Sectors of activity
The Statistics Canada most recent Survey on the labour force tells us about the distribution of different types of contract by sector of activity. It is worth noticing that temporary jobs are the most significant in the following categories: education services (28.8%), health and social services (13.9%), public administration (17.5%), construction (20.8%), information and culture (29.4%) and accommodation and food sectors (19.3%) (for all types of temporary jobs). Healthcare, public administration and education services are particularly represented in temporary contracts, while seasonal jobs are primarily offered in construction and in the accommodation and food industry (statistics of June 2017).
Workforce
While the companies that offer the most permanent contracts are those employing 20 to 99 employees (34%), companies the hire more temporaries are those with less than 20 employees (40%). This 40% average hides variations based on the type of temporary job: 34% for contract jobs, 43% for casual and 51% for seasonal.
Features of the contracts offered
Duration of temporary contracts in Canadian companies
The duration of temporary contracts varies depending on economic conditions. Indeed, during a period of growth, there is an increase in the number of long term contracts (25 months or more). Ccontracts for 25 months and longer increased by close to 50% (while they represented 24% of contracts in 1997, they rose to 33% of contracts in 2009).
Duration of work
Regardless of the type of contract, there is still a difference between the number of hours worked by men and by women. The number of hours worked is highest for permanent contracts (38 hours for men, 34 hours for women). Contract jobs lose an average of 4 hours of work per week compared to permanent (34 hours for men and 30 hours for women). Seasonal jobs are contracts that offer the least number of hours worked, with 23 on average for men and 20 for women. For contracts of over 50 hours, these are mostly present in seasonal contracts (30%) and represent just 10% of permanent and contract jobs.