Half of GTA Employees in Precarious Jobs

If you  are employed Full-Time with a job with benefits in Southern Ontario, hang on to that job at all costs. Fully half of So. Ontario workers are in what is called precarious positions. No benefits, no guaranteed income, less than full time hours. Fully half the workers do not believe they will be in the same position in one years time.

The days of jobs for life are long gone. Defined pensions are a thing of the past, unless you work for the government. Unskilled, uneducated jobs are scarce and low paying. It is not a good time to be unemployed. Recent graduates and older workers are the most vulnerable. You are lucky to get a contract job. No employer will higher an older worker on anything but contract work.

The biggest mistake is to quit your work when you are upset with your employer. The number one rule is never quit a job, unless you have lined up another better paying job first. Even then your new employer will lay you off first in a downturn. If you are unemployed you are competing against dozens of people for any one position, maybe hundreds with equal, or better skills. Maybe they are younger with a longer shelf life, or friends and family of other workers.

In my industry the older workers compete for contract work. Many have full pensions as they were part of the last lucky generation. It is rare in my position to end your career in anything more than a contract job, working maybe in 6-month cycles, hoping to get a renewal of the contract.

Thousands of high paying industrial jobs have left the province for low pay jurisdictions in the US south, or Third World. When I was growing up in Hamilton, the sons of steel workers assumed they had a guaranteed job at the mill waiting for them when they graduated. In many cases they were the last generation to take advantage of those jobs. They are now long gone.

People took full time jobs with benefits for granted, but they are disappearing very quickly.

If you are angry with your employer, hang in there, wait it out. If they are upset with you, at least wait to get packaged out and give yourself time to look for work, with money to tide you over. There has never been a worse time to be unemployed and looking for work. It is not going to get any better.

I knew it was bad out there on the streets, but I was shocked when I read the articles last week. Google "precarious jobs GTA". Read the articles and hang on to your job for dear life.