The Conference Board of Canada completed the research and analysis for the CAHRC.
The report’s findings include discovering agriculture has an “above-average vacancy rate of 7.4 per cent, with two in five employers saying they couldn’t find the workers they needed.”
The data also highlighted how Canada leans on out-of-country employees.
Canadian ag employed more than 420,000 workers in 2022 with nearly 25 per cent of them (or around 105,000) being foreign workers, CAHRC says.
Shedding light on the overall ag labour situation will help stakeholders identify ways to manage the issue, said Jennifer Wright, executive director of the CAHRC.
“We cannot solve the issues facing our sector if we do not know exactly what they are and where they exist. That is why this new data is so important,” she said in a statement. “The information tells us there is an urgent need to boost labour supply and empower domestic and foreign workers to secure the industry’s future viability.”
The CAHRC will release more detailed information in the coming weeks, which will include reports on occupations, skills gaps and recruitment strategies.