The past two years have affected employment in agriculture and food, changing the how, where, and way we work and conduct business. AgCareers.com annually reviews trends in jobs, candidates, and site activity in our Agribusiness Job Report. This review of trends helps the industry identify career trends and move forward.
After staggering unemployment rates in 2020, unemployment rates dropped in 2021. The vital agricultural industry experienced strong hiring in 2021. There were nearly 5,000 Canadian jobs posted in 2021, an increase of almost 10%.
Candidate Trends
Candidates continue actively pursuing careers in agriculture and use AgCareers.com in the job search process. Canadian users searched the most for “research,” “intern,” and “marketing.” Fresh additions to the top searches this year were “remote,” and “in- tern.” The interest in remote positions is a direct response to the pandemic’s influence on work-from-home availability, needs and job seeker expectations.
Nearly 2,000 new Canadian candidates created job seeker accounts on AgCareers.com in 2021. Candidates added over 4,000 new resumes to the AgCareers.com database in 2021.
AgCareers.com has qualified job candidate traffic throughout Canada, however, looking at provinces individually, Ontar- io kept its spot in the top of applications. Applications from Quebec increased, while those from British Columbia dropped.
Sixty-six percent of applicants had a bachelor’s degree or higher. The majority of North American applicants had an ag-based degree (63%), with Ag Business remaining the most common. Fourteen percent of applicants were students and 57% were currently or most recently employed in ag occupations. Over one-third of applicants had 10-plus years of experience.
Job Trends
Despite the pandemic, Canadian job postings increased in 2021; job postings peaked in January, with another rise in October.
Saskatchewan jumped to the top job posting province in 2021, with an increase of 57% from 2020. Alberta jobs also increased significantly (51%).
Operator/general laborer and sales/retail careers continued as the most frequently posted career type. Sales/retail careers were the most common remote/work-from-home jobs posted on AgCareers.com. In examining trending career types overall, there were the highest increases in skilled and technical trades, consultants, and risk management/security positions in 2021.
When we examine all Canadian jobs, Commodities & Trading was again the leading industry sector on AgCareers.com, followed by Chemical, Pesticide and Fertilizer. The Equipment, Manufacturing, and Technical, and Precision Ag industry sectors were also in the top ten.
Written by: Bonnie Johnson
BONNIE JOHNSON has more than twenty years of professional marketing experience, including nine years with AgCareers.com. As a marketing specialist, she supports the AgCareers.com team and brand through marketing and communications efforts. This includes internal and external communications, email marketing, company branding, market research, and data analysis. Please send questions and/or comments to bonnie.johnson@agcareers.com.
