How we work out the numbers

What we count

Every month we take all the jobs posted on Tradesppl that month and add them up. We report how many jobs went up in each trade, what they pay when the ad says so, how many ads name a wage at all, which provinces are hiring, and how much of the work is full-time, part-time or contract. One thing to be clear about: this covers the jobs on our board, not every trades job in the country. Think of it as a steady monthly sample you can watch month to month, not a head count of the whole industry.

Where the jobs come from

Jobs reach us three ways: employers post them here themselves; we read them straight off employer career sites and public job services; or they come in from the licensed job feeds we carry. Each source leans a different way: the feeds lean toward outfits that advertise on the big boards, the direct sources lean toward large contractors, utilities, manufacturers and public-sector employers, and the jobs posted here lean toward smaller trades businesses.

Some of the feed jobs in every edition come through the Adzuna API:

How we sort jobs by trade

We tag each job with its trade as it comes in. If a job fits more than one trade, we count it once, under the most specific one, so no job is counted twice. Jobs that do not fit any trade we track (general labour, warehouse and mixed roles) still count in the totals, but they do not show up in the trade-by-trade tables.

How we handle pay

We only use ads that actually state what the job pays. We never estimate a wage or fill one in ourselves. If an ad gives a range, we take the middle of it. To compare hourly and salaried work side by side we turn hourly rates into a year's pay at full-time hours — 40 a week, 52 weeks — and do the same for weekly and monthly rates. Every pay figure is in CAD. If fewer than 8 ads for a trade name a wage, we leave the figure out rather than print something shaky. The headline figure is the typical wage — half the jobs pay more and half pay less — shown with the range the middle half of jobs fall in. We use those rather than an average because one unusually high or low ad cannot drag them around.

What these numbers cannot tell you

• This is what employers advertise, which is not always what lands on the cheque once a job is negotiated. For what people actually earn, see Statistics Canada.
• How many jobs we count in a month moves with the job market, but it also moves when we add or lose a source. Until we have a longer run of months, treat a change from one month to the next as a rough signal rather than a hard trend.
• Region counts follow where the job is, not where the worker lives. A job advertised in several places counts under its main one.

Using these numbers

Use the index anywhere you like — an article, a report, a union newsletter, a class. All we ask is that you credit Tradesppl and link to tradesppl.ca/hiring-index. If you need a figure we do not publish, or want to check something, use our contact page.