LONDON, Ont., October 16, 2024 – Pillar Nonprofit Network and the Elgin Middlesex Oxford Workforce Planning Board have co-published their third annual annual nonprofit employer report, indicating an urgent need to stabilize the region’s nonprofit workforce. This year's look at operating conditions for nonprofit employers in the London Economic Region (LER) includes three years of data indicating that ongoing workforce challenges are persistent and signs of recovery are scant, with important implications for regional economic and social recovery.
The study mines data from the annual regional EmployerOne survey. This year’s report features three years of data tracking trends for nonprofit employers, including a cycle of continuous hiring for precarious work while employees stream out of the sector and more employers report hard-to-fill positions. Full reports of the data can also be found on the Pillar and EMOWPDB websites (links below).
Among the key findings:
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93% of nonprofit employers reported hiring in 2023, 15 points higher than business employers widening a gap that has been 4-5 per cent over business employers in the two years previous.
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A significantly lower percentage of nonprofits than businesses reported hiring for full-time permanent positions (26% vs 41%), continuing a three-year trend of lower and flatter full-time hiring by nonprofits; by contrast, a greater percentage of nonprofits than businesses reported hiring for contract positions, again continuing a trend of at least three years.
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For the third year in a row, a greater proportion of nonprofit employers than businesses reported separations in the previous year (83% vs 65%), with the gap growing in 2023 to 18% from 9% in 2022 and just 5% in 2021
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Quits remain the leading type of separation in the nonprofit sector, down a little to 59% in 2023 from 66% in 2022 and still well over the 32% mark of 2021. By comparison, quits have remained relatively flat in the business sector, well above rates in the nonprofit sector in 2021 and well below since.
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For the first time in three years, a greater percentage of nonprofits than businesses are reporting hard-to-fill positions, with greater than two-thirds of nonprofit respondents saying that they had positions that were difficult to fill from just over half in the previous two years. This represents a reversal of fortunes, with businesses reporting hard-to-fill positions falling to 57% in 2023 from 66% in 2021.
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A higher number of nonprofit employers (84%) than businesses (75%) plan to hire in 2024; it’s the same high proportion of nonprofits who reported plans to hire in 2023, while the number of businesses reporting plans to hire in the next 12 months has fallen to 75%, 9 points lower than nonprofit employers.
“This collaboration arose originally to explore the economic recovery of the nonprofit sector in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has revealed persistent system challenges,” says Paul Seale, Pillar’s Manager of Public Policy and Advocacy. “When you realize that nonprofits represent 8-9 percent of GDP in Canada and more than 10 percent of all jobs in Canada, the health of the sector clearly has implications for broad economic recovery in the region and needs immediate attention. Thankfully, work like this is beginning to show results,” Seale continues, noting that City of London Mayor Josh Morgan has committed to bringing Pillar and the nonprofit sector into an overarching economic development plan.
Pillar CEO, Maureen Cassidy adds that there are implications for supporting equity-deserving communities in our region. “According to Statistics Canada, women make up more than three-quarters of the nonprofit sector’s workforce, almost half of sector workers are immigrants, and nearly a third are racialized. If we want to create opportunities for these members of our community, we need to be thinking about supporting their workplaces, too.”
Petrusia Honar, Executive Director of the Elgin Middlesex Oxford Workforce Planning and Development Board underlines the value of analyses like these. “Taken as an aggregate, it may appear that London is experiencing a healthy market for workers and employers, but when we’re able to dive into the numbers, we can do a better job of distinguishing sectors that need attention from those that are experiencing average or better than average conditions.”
Nonprofit employers and sector advocates had identified wage disparities, precarious work, and workforce development gaps as persistent problems in the sector long before the pandemic. Pillar and the EMOWPDB look forward to sharing this information with governments and with stakeholders across all sectors seeking an equitable social and economic recovery. We continue to call for greater investments in nonprofit workforce planning and development.
Additional findings include:
- Though they rose in 2021 for both nonprofits and businesses, dismissals have levelled off in the nonprofit sector while they continue to rise in businesses.
- As a percent of separations, retirements have remained flat in the nonprofit sector at under 3% of separations while retirements in business fell steeply to 4% of separations in 2023 after rates of 13% and 14% in 2021 and 2022.
- The rates of permanent layoffs as a percentage of separations in the nonprofit sector rose steeply in 2023 to 22% from just 12% the previous year, itself a steep decline from 30% in 2021. Rates of permanent layoffs in the business sector rose slightly also, though less dramatically, climbing to 4% from 3% the previous year.
- After more than 1 in 3 nonprofit employers reported temporary layoffs as a cause of separations in 2021, the rate of temporary layoffs has levelled off, at 9% in 2023 from 12% in 2022. The opposite condition affects the business sector, with a rise over the last three years from 17% to 26%.
Aggregate data can be found in charts and graphs on the EMOWPDB website at: https://workforcedevelopment.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/EmployerOne-Survey-Nonprofit-Longitudinal-Analysis-3.pdf.