The NSC’s Recruitment Experiences and Outlook Survey for August 2022 continues to reflect a tight labour market.

Recruitment activity remained high with 56% of employers reporting recruitment activity, which was 3 percentage points lower than last month.

Over the month, the recruitment difficulty rate eased by 1 percentage point to 74% of recruiting employers (representing 41% of all employers), but was nevertheless the second-highest recruitment difficulty rate recorded for this series.

Although the recruitment difficulty rate increased slightly in Capital Cities (up 1 percentage point on last month to 75%), it fell in Rest-of-State areas (down by 6 percentage points to 71%).

The proportion of employers who expected to increase their staffing levels over the next 3 months rose by 6 percentage points to 31%. Some 3% of employers were expecting to decrease staffing in the next three months, the same proportion as last month.