Ontario job seekers increasingly looking for work in other provinces: Indeed

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A new report says Ontario job seekers are increasingly looking for work in other provinces, especially those looking for jobs in remote-friendly sectors like tech.

The job search company says in the second half of 2022, 6.1 per cent of clicks on Canadian job postings by Ontario-based job seekers were for positions in other provinces.

That's an almost 50 per cent increase from the second half of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic upended the labour market.

Indeed says while interest in moving to British Columbia and Nova Scotia spiked at the beginning of the pandemic, Alberta has led growth in clicks from Ontario job seekers ever since.

The growth in outbound interest from Ontario has been particularly strong in remote-friendly jobs like tech and marketing.

Indeed says this trend shows not only a rising interest in moving outside of Ontario, which is also reflected in Statistics Canada migration data, but it also highlights the pandemic's effect on remote work, expanding the geographic scope of white-collar job searches.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 31, 2023.