Toronto becomes a rebounding outlier for growth in employment opportunities- Linkedin official

Toronto is emerging as a beacon of recovery among Canada’s provinces due to an increase in hiring opportunities, according to Kory Kantenga, Head of Economics, Americas, at LinkedIn’s Economic Graph Research Institute.

Kantenga revealed this during a lecture at the Bfuture 2025 Black Professionals Summit in Toronto, hosted by Obsidi, in a session titled: The State of the Labour Market, noting that although the Canadian labour marke,t alongside its peers in advanced economies is experiencing a persistent slowdown, “pretty much everywhere in Canada is slowing except for Toronto, which is rebounding.”

He explained that Toronto’s large presence in financial services, which is home to the big banks, is driving this turnaround. This resilience is partly due to interest rates in Canada having fallen sharply.

Read also: Professionals move to advance LinkedIn innovation, future of work in Nigeria

However, the economist noted that markets focused on struggling sectors, like Montreal, with its concentration in manufacturing, continue to see a slowdown.

He noted that the slowdown started in the spring of 2022 when interest rates went up, which reduced hiring, which has slowed down ever since across most advanced economies.

 Divergent global trends and Canada’s mixed picture

While advanced economies, including Canada and the US, are all slowing and exhibiting hiring rates below pre-pandemic levels, a stark contrast exists in emerging markets. 

Kantenga pointed to India and the UAE as examples where the labour market remains very robust.

In Canada specifically, however, the economist offered a cautious note of encouragement regarding the breadth of job creation. While he noted there isn’t broad-based growth in employment, the source of new jobs remains diversified.

“You see, Canada’s posting the rainbow of jobs. We’ve got everything coming in,” Kantenga stated. He explained that this mixed, or broad-based, nature of employment gains is a good sign. If it were only one sector, and that one sector collapsed, can you imagine what would happen to the job market?”

Read also: 6 Advantages of Doing Business in Canada for Growth & Success

. Unemployment t concentrated among younger workers

A troubling trend, echoed in the US data, is the rising unemployment rate for younger workers in Canada (under 24). Kantenga noted that unemployment weakness is concentrated among younger workers here in Canada.

He attributed this vulnerability to the specific industries where younger workers typically concentrate, such as accommodation and food services, which are often front-facing and easier to enter. The momentum is not in these sectors, nor is it in large-scale tech.

The economist explained that even if there was momentum in technology, which he clarified there is not, it wouldn’t necessarily help the majority of young job seekers, given that “Tech is not even 5 per cent of all employees.”

Read also: The harsh reality of Nigeria’s job market today

Healthcare to drive future growth

Looking ahead, Kantenga forecasts a concentration of job growth in a few resilient sectors, namely hospitals and healthcare.

 “Employment growth is going to be driven by a few sectors over the next year,” he predicted, explaining that the ageing population and longer lifespans ensure continued momentum in healthcare.

The momentum in this sector is already evident. Citing data, he highlighted that the hiring rate for hospitals and healthcare is above the rest. 

“The focus is on clinical healthcare, with high demand for doctors and nurses who are interacting with patients”, he explained.

Conversely, employment in manufacturing is expected to contract this year, largely due to a slowdown in US demand for Canadian goods and increased focus on automation. The construction sector also faces headwinds due to its reliance on US economic activity.

Tech workers urged to look beyond traditional roles

For professionals like software engineers, Kantenga’s advice is for them to pivot their focus to resilient sectors. He suggested that a software engineer might not want to look at a traditional tech company, but at healthcare tech, for instance.

He warned that hiring is currently the slowest for Research & Development (R&D) roles like IT and engineering, attributing this to a long-term trend.

“We’re not investing as much in terms of R&D labour. We’re putting a lot of money into R&D spending on capital expenditures on AI, but we’re not putting as much into labour.”

Read also: Here are five in-demand skills you need for 2025 and beyond

In-demand roles and the rise of soft skills

Kantenga detailed several specific roles currently seeing momentum in Canada, such as flight attendants, which is driven by shortages and a sharp recovery in tourism. Another is partnership management, which he described as a “revenue-generating role.”. The next is an audiovisual technician, document controller, and artificial intelligence engineer.

More critically, he stressed the growing demand for soft skills, especially in technical fields. For engineers, while LLM (large language model, a type of AI program that can recognise and generate text, among other tasks) and AI are top technical skills, he stressed that people management and agile problem solving are crucial differentiators.

“If AI can get everyone coding at the same level… that’s what’s really going to distinguish you at that point, it’s going to be those soft skills,” Kantenga remarked.

He also highlighted the increasing importance of executive communication for roles like program management, which involves communicating at the right altitude and avoiding unnecessary technical jargon when speaking to leadership.

The importance of stakeholder management regarding AI

Addressing the impact of AI, Kantenga reassured the audience that AI primarily augments skills first, rather than immediately causing displacement.

However, he introduced a new, non-technical task that will become part of nearly every professional’s job, which is stakeholder management regarding AI.

“You need to manage your stakeholders. You need to explain what AI can do, and what AI cannot do,” he explained, noting that the new default question from every boss will be, “Why can’t AI do this?”

He concluded that jobs rarely become totally obsolete but rather change, a process that happens slowly as employers gradually slow hiring in old roles and demand new skills.

The boomer generation and workforce shrinkage

Kantenga also addressed the long-discussed retirement wave of the Boomer generation. While acknowledging that retirements accelerated during COVID-19, he noted a phenomenon of ‘un-retirements’ driven by the high cost of living (fixed incomes versus inflation).

He framed the ongoing retirement trend as a gradual, accumulating change that will be a bigger long-term constraint on the workforce than AI.

 “If you’re a hiring manager, or an employer… you need to integrate that into your workforce planning,” he asserted. “Because when that wave, that’s not going to be a wave of retirement that you wake up one morning and everyone’s retired… it’s going to be like evolution.”