Harriet Torry

We have reported that tech firms are leading layoff plans and there have been some high profile announcements of companies that are either cutting jobs or automating jobs.

We haven't seen this reflected in the payrolls data much so far.

I mean, we did see last month the information sector lost 13,000 jobs, but it is a bit early to say exactly how AI is affecting these numbers because other companies have been saying that AI is making their employees more productive.

Having said that, employment in the IT sector, which includes telecommunications and data processing, is down about 11% since its most recent peak, which was in November 2022.

I think caregiving is really the answer to that question.

During the pandemic, we saw everything shut down.

Schools went to remote learning and it was just a really tough time for so many families to juggle both of them.

And just by default, a lot of women just didn't have the time or the bandwidth to try and stay in the labour force.

A lot of women left the labour force and it took time for them to come back.

I mean, there are definitely some benefits from the pandemic.

We saw this very big adjustment to remote working.

It became so much more normalised to have a remote job.

And there are many women out there who have profited from that and who have found a better work-life balance from being able to work from home and to have that flexibility over their schedules.

But certainly initially in the pandemic, when the economy shut down, it was really tough for families to balance caregiving duties and work.

Overall, the labor market is just not that great for everybody, men and women.

It's just quite a difficult time if you're looking for a job.

What we saw when we came out of the pandemic was that there were very acute worker shortages.

So for a couple of years, the labor market was extremely hot.

Wage growth was through the roof.

If you wanted a job, it was really easy to find one, and you could probably get a nice, hefty wage increase to go with it.