Like many business owners in Squamish, Amy Bourget of FTC Property Services is finding it exceptionally difficult to find employees this year.
“It’s been the nature of business in Squamish for it to be a challenge to find good staff,” said Bourget, who has run the commercial cleaning business for 11 years. “But this year it’s been the worst. I used to get 10 to 15 resumes and now I might not even get one.”
Paying nearly double minimum wage in many cases, FTC Property Services is still having a problem finding employees and has had to give up contracts due to the shortage, she added.
“I work seven days a week because we don’t have staff to take over,” said Bourget, who prefers to hire local people but may look at the temporary foreign worker program again if she continues to not find anyone.
More “help wanted” signs are being posted around Squamish, as owners of coffee shops, restaurants, grocery stores and other businesses look for new employees.
The labour shortage has even caused a handful of businesses to temporarily close for a few hours or the whole day.
The owners of Sushi Goemon, for instance, wrote on their Facebook page about their search for staff. “Dear customers, we will be unexpectedly [temporarily] closed tomorrow due to a shortage of staff for the entire day. We are desperately looking for full time and part time servers at Sushi Goemon,” they wrote and opened the restaurant again the next day.
Many new jobs are entry-level positions. Certain employers are offering above minimum wage (set at $10.45 an hour), such as McDonald’s, which has a sign up advertising $12 an hour for a full-time position and $11 for part time.
“Overall, the unemployment rate in [the Squamish area] has been on a steady decline and for June it was the second lowest in B.C. at 5.3 per cent,” said Naomi Dunaway, with WorkBC Employment Services Centre.
As contributing factors to the labour shortage, Dunaway cites the high cost of housing in Squamish, fewer young people out working and tighter restrictions on the temporary foreign worker program.
The increasing cost of renting in Squamish is a problem for potential employees who are considering moving to the district, said Bourget.
“We had a supervisor who was with us for three years move to Kamloops because he couldn’t afford to live here with his family anymore,” she said. “People want to live here but there are no suitable places to rent.”
A possible solution would be to build FTC Property Services staff housing where employees could live at affordable rates, but this would require buying an apartment, an option Bourget can’t afford at the moment.
“We definitely need more places for people to live that they can afford,” she said.
On Squamish’s WorkBC Employment Services Centre online postings, 76 positions were available last week, not including multiple positions advertised by several restaurants. Fifty-eight per cent of these jobs were for full-time work.
