Canadians seeking work for the holidays may be in luck this year thanks to an uptick in job postings as of early November, a sign of a rebound in seasonal hiring after years of slow down.

This year’s spike in seasonal hiring has been somewhat stronger than in 2024, with holiday

job postings

on Indeed Canada up 12 per cent as of Nov. 4 compared to last year, according to data released by the employment site. The postings use terms such as “seasonal,” “holiday” or “Christmas” in their job titles.

This year-over-year increase is

an improvement from last year’s

seasonal postings on Indeed, which were down 15 per cent from 2023 and substantially lower than at their height in 2022.

Indeed Canada’s senior economist, Brendon Bernard, said one potential reason for the rise could be the solid Canadian retail sales over the past year, both overall and at bricks-and-mortar stores, which started to pick up towards the end of 2024.

“2024 was especially weak on the holiday posting side, which, combined with a decent year for

retail sales

, could be some factors driving (the uptick),” Bernard said in an interview. “But there are also just more people out and about, gradually coming out of

the pandemic.”

This rise in seasonal postings compared to 2024 comes amid flat overall job postings, pushing the seasonal share of total postings up for the first time since 2022.

The decline in holiday postings from 2022 to 2024 was part of the broader cooling of employer hiring following the pandemic, his report said.

Indeed said the timing of seasonal postings in 2025 has been no different than in previous years, usually starting in September. Around that time, Canadian employers in the retail and customer service sectors begin recruiting seasonal workers to supplement employment around the holidays, with recruiting activity typically peaking at the end of October.

The report said demand for these workers isn’t particularly robust and remains relatively weak compared to earlier years. The numbers this year are still down by eight per cent and 35 per cent compared to where they stood at this time in 2023 and 2022, respectively, it said.

“Things are a bit stronger this year, (but) last year was really weak. So it’s not like the market is robust, but there’s a bit of bit of a bounce back in 2025 and that’s something I wasn’t necessarily expecting when I first took a look at the data,” said Bernard.

Despite this, the break in the downward trend is still good news for those seeking temporary employment around year-end, said Indeed.

The overall share of jobs that were explicitly seasonal held steady over the two-year period between 2022 to 2024, as both holiday and total postings fell similarly.

  • Canadians to pile on billions in debt this holiday season
  • Two financial strategies that are worth keeping for next year

The partial rebound in 2025 appears different, the report said, with total postings roughly flat from the prior November, even as seasonal demand perked up.

The result has been a slight uptick in the seasonal share of Canadian job postings, from 1.23 per cent at the start of November 2024 to 1.34 per cent in 2025.

• Email: dpaglinawan@postmedia.com