The personal finance number to watch now is job vacancies

The job market is where the boldest strokes to improve your personal finances are made.

A big emphasis in personal finance is spending less to free up room for saving and investing, but making more money is better. The best year in ages for positioning yourself in the job market to make more was 2022. Since then, the job market has been deteriorating.

Job vacancies are down about 40 per cent since the 2022 peak, BMO Economics said in a recent note. The current vacancy rate is lower than it was right before the pandemic, a time of sluggish economic growth.

At the peak, there were about one million job vacancies in Canada. Desperate to lure and retain workers, employers were wide open to negotiating salary, benefits and terms of employment like remote work. Job-hopping was a thing back then. Openings were so plentiful that workers could take their pick.

Fewer vacancies mean less opportunity to improve your finances by moving to a better-paying job elsewhere. Promotions could be harder to come by if there’s less movement in the job market and, if the economy keeps slowing, so could raises and bonuses.

Expect the rising job vacancy trend to continue if the economy stays on its slow-growth track. An outright recession would bring the additional risk of layoffs or reductions in hours worked.

The past two years were a time to play offence in the job market by seeking out better-paying opportunities. We are now transitioning into a period where a more defensive mindset is called for. If raises, bonuses and promotions will be harder to come by, what are you doing to get your share?

Also, forget about quiet quitting. That’s a trend of a couple of years ago where people did the bare minimum at their jobs as a protest against what they saw as excessive demands from their employer. Quiet quitters seem an obvious place to start if jobs are cut.

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Rob’s personal finance reading list

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Reader comments on cooling towels: “Cooling towels (as mentioned in a recent newsletter) are great. My wife got a couple as freebies at a trade show. I’ll admit to sneering at them until I tried one when doing yardwork one summer, draped across the back of my neck. Fabulous! Helps to keep me cool and keeps the sun from burning the back of my neck.”

“I have a cooling towel by Frogg Togg that I loaned to my parents last year when their air conditioning conked out during a heat wave. These are actually high-tech items disguised as a cloth. The cloth is polyvinyl alcohol, which is hyper-evaporative. So they don’t actually get cold – they lose water so efficiently that they always feel cold to the touch.”

Do you have a question or comment for me? Send it my way. Sorry I can’t answer every one personally. Questions and answers are edited for length and clarity.

Attention: Podcast fans

Subscribe to Stress Test on Apple podcasts or Spotify.

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In the social sphere

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