Y DEREK ABMA, FINANCIAL POST JULY 7, 2011

Job-posting website CareerBuilder.ca said the survey conducted on its behalf by Harris Interactive showed 61 per cent of companies questioned said they intend to hire new employees between July and December.

Photograph by: Brian Snyder, Reuters

OTTAWA — Canadians should see a "solid" jobs market for the remainder of the year, according to a newly released survey of hiring managers.

Job-posting website CareerBuilder.ca said the survey conducted on its behalf by Harris Interactive showed 61 per cent of companies questioned said they intend to hire new employees between July and December. That was up slightly from 58 per cent when the same poll was done a year earlier.

"The job growth trend in Canada remains solid, as employers expect to continue to add more positions in the second half of this year," CareerBuilder said in a statement.

Forty-three per cent of respondents said they would be hiring full-time staff in the last half of the year, 26 per cent said they'd hire part-time workers, and 27 per cent said they would be looking for temporary or contract workers. Last year's corresponding results were 41 per cent for full time, 16 per cent for part time and 24 per cent for temp or contract.

"Our survey and listings on CareerBuilder.ca point to the resilience of the Canadian labour market as economies around the globe work to rebuild after the recession." said Brent Rasmussen, CareerBuilder's president for North America.

Many of the positions that will hired for in the coming months, the survey indicated, were either innovation-based or centred around frontline staff. This included jobs in information technology, business development, marketing, customer service and administration.

More than half the respondents said they were concerned about losing key talent as the economy improves, while 30 per cent said they had already lost some of their top workers in recent months.

Forty per cent said they have open positions for which they can't find qualified workers, while about 60 per cent said there is a shortage of skills in their organization. Know-how in IT, communications and customer service were the most common skills lacking.

The results were based on online surveys of 231 non-government hiring managers taken between May 19 and June 8. CareerBuilder said a random sample of this size would yield a margin of error of 6.45 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

On Friday, Statistics Canada is slated to provide officials jobs data from June. Economists expect 15,000 more people were employed in Canada last month and that the unemployment rate stayed at 7.4 per cent.

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CNS 7/07/11 7:46:27