Why Canadians are holding onto jobs they hate | Cost of Living

Añadido: 2026-06-03

[00:00:03]Glenn Fall is going to the World Cup, Canada's home opener versus Bosnia and Herzuggavina.

[00:00:09]When he told his friends he got tickets, >> a lot of them are surprised I was able to get them. So, I think they're like, "Wow, how'd you do it?" But then they were also No one ever asked me how much.

[00:00:18]I I I said to him, "They were a lot, but and that was enough." Let's just say the World Cup ain't cheap to go or to host.

[00:00:40]Hi, I'm Paul Hversh. Welcome to the cost of living. The World Cup is expected to bring in more than $9 billion for FIFA, an organization that does not have a sterling reputation when it comes to money. And Canada's in the middle of the action. Where does the money go? What will it do for the economy? These are big questions.

[00:01:01]But do they really matter to footy fans?

[00:01:06]Also today, what is sardine maxing?

[00:01:10]Well, it's what happens when prices for beef, pork, and chicken jump, but you still need protein.

[00:01:17]So nowadays, it can be goodbye charcoy and hello seuderie.

[00:01:25]Up first, are you happy at work?

[00:01:28]Unhappy?

[00:01:30]Let's hope we're happy because if not, you still may not be going anywhere.

[00:01:55]So Jenny, if you think about all the jobs you've had, have they all been in journalism or have you done a bunch of stuff?

[00:02:00]>> I've kind of done it all.

[00:02:02]>> Do tell.

[00:02:03]>> Oh man. Okay. So I was a piano teacher.

[00:02:05]I organized fabric at a fabric store. I was a receptionist for a while.

[00:02:10]>> Okay. So, were you all like, "Dunder Mifflin. This is Pam."

[00:02:13]>> Yeah. I was like, "Good morning, blah blah blah construction. How can I help you?" Ah, >> that's right. They're for you.

[00:02:19]>> Yeah. I just wanted to get experience and stay employed.

[00:02:22]>> Well, that kind of tracks, right? Cuz you're a millennial. That's the stereotype. A lot of job hopping.

[00:02:28]>> Yeah, you could say that. The idea of being loyal to a single employer is a little bit outdated. I talked to a woman who definitely feels that way. She's in her 30s and has changed jobs quite a bit. She's always looking out for better opportunities. I'd say like the longest I've worked somewhere is 3 years. Um the shortest I've ever worked somewhere is I think 10 months. Um but I'd say like I always left for an opportunity that felt right at the time.

[00:02:58]>> So she sounds pretty foot loose and fancy free.

[00:03:01]>> She'll bop around. That's someone we'll call Sarah. She works and lives in a big Canadian city. We're not using her real name because it could impact her current job. Sarah landed a new position late last year. It's in her field, PR and communications, but just a few months in, it's already starting to lose its appeal.

[00:03:22]>> I'm not happy. I'm not fulfilled in any way or finding any kind of sense of purpose. And I'm finding that the growth opportunities that are there don't necessarily exist.

[00:03:36]>> Normally, when Sarah starts to feel this way in a job, she starts looking around for something new. But right now, she's staying put.

[00:03:44]>> Even though she says she's not happy.

[00:03:46]>> No, she's not. But to her, it just feels too risky to leave.

[00:03:50]>> I just hear all the time that no one's hiring and that, yeah, we should all just be lucky to even have jobs. So, it's discouraging. I'd say >> Sarah's keeping an eye out, but she's not actively applying for anything.

[00:04:03]She's what's being called a job hugger.

[00:04:06]>> Okay. I kind of have this image of her like a koala just like clinging on to her job.

[00:04:10]>> Yeah, you're not wrong about that. And she's not the only one. There are a lot of people like Sarah out there.

[00:04:16]Statistics Canada keeps track of turnover in the labor market.

[00:04:20]Specifically, job switchers, workers who move to a different employer from one month to the next.

[00:04:26]The number of people switching jobs right now compared to 5 years ago is half of what it was.

[00:04:31]>> That's a big drop. So, we're just not moving around.

[00:04:35]>> Mike Sheckchman is watching this trend closely. He's with Robert Half, a large employment agency in Canada. He says there's been a big shift. The balance of power has changed between workers and employers. A few years ago, employers were in a bidding war for new hires.

[00:04:52]>> The battle for talent uh was immense. Uh we saw companies hire uh and even overhire in so many circumstances coming out of the pandemic.

[00:05:02]>> There were competitive salary offers, perks and benefits packages designed to outdo each other. There were meditation rooms and flexible work policies. It was an employees market >> and for the most part people felt comfortable uh jumping to a new opportunity because they knew they were good for a 10 to 20% increase in salary.

[00:05:25]>> Well, yeah. Historically, if you want more money, that's one of the ways to get it, right? You go somewhere else.

[00:05:31]>> Yeah, it was like that, but maybe not anymore. If you're expecting to get a big salary bump from switching jobs, Mike says that just isn't as common today. Robert Half recently surveyed nearly 1400 workers in fields like tech, HR, and finance. They asked people where they saw greater salary potential by moving to a new job or staying put.

[00:05:55]Nearly 60% said they thought they were better off staying where they were.

[00:05:59]>> Wonder how much the fear factor is involved here. Like you look around, try to find a new job. It it isn't easy.

[00:06:04]>> Yeah, it can be daunting. Unemployment is up. It's at 6.9% and that's up from 5% in 2023. And job growth has stalled compared to even 2 years ago. There are just a lot fewer jobs being added to the economy every month.

[00:06:19]>> Yeah, because companies are just not hiring as much as they were.

[00:06:22]>> Plus, there's just a lot of uncertainty out there between tariffs and the price of gas and what's going to happen with AI. Yeah, know companies um are are certainly more cautious. Uh you know, you've seen companies more methodical in terms of the hiring that they're doing, in terms of who they're adding to the team and where they're investing.

[00:06:42]>> Employers are just kind of in a holding pattern. The Bank of Canada says we're in a low hire, lowfire environment.

[00:06:49]>> Low higher, low fire. Sorry, I can't wrap that. Uh static. Things are just static. a whole lot of nothing, which is not so great news for the economy in more ways than one. Some job turnover or churn is a good thing. Jim Stamford is a labor economist in Vancouver. He says the economy is always changing. Some industries are growing, some industries are shrinking, and jobs have to change in response to that. Think about obviously automation and robots and artificial intelligence and how that's changing many jobs and people change. Um in general um it's it's very healthy when the labor market can adjust uh to reflect those changes in industries in technologies and skills uh rather than being kind of stuck in one place.

[00:07:35]>> But it sounds like the market isn't adjusting and more of us are just stuck.

[00:07:39]>> Stuck and sometimes unhappy. Workers in jobs that match their skills are usually more satisfied, which leads to happiness, yes, but also efficiency and productivity. A labor market that is more flexible, that has more movement for good reasons. Uh is a labor market that is going to be more efficient. It's going to find a better match between the skills and interests of workers and the jobs that they're actually doing rather than having, you know, a lot of uh people with PhDs driving Uber because they couldn't find something better.

[00:08:10]You do hear about surgeons out there who aren't surgeoning.

[00:08:14]>> Yeah, there's some languishing happening and the power has shifted back to employers. Some of those perks we talked about, Jim says they could be snatched back.

[00:08:25]>> Employers know that individual workers are easily replaceable in a labor market that has so much slack. And so they start offering less, offering less flexibility and uh recruiting people at lower wages and lower benefits.

[00:08:40]>> I've been reading a lot of stories like this and even just have some anecdotal examples of of friends who are going through this. Just a lot of employers tightening up.

[00:08:47]>> Yeah, there's a couple recent examples in the US where job creation is also slowed. The big consulting firm Deote intends to cut back paytime off and parental leave benefits for some workers next year. And we hear a lot about employers here and in the US calling staff back into the office 5 days a week.

[00:09:04]>> So for workers, if this is a trend, this doesn't feel awesome.

[00:09:08]>> No. And Mike Shman with Robert Half says that doesn't show signs of changing soon.

[00:09:13]>> Speaking with a lot of people, they're waiting for another shoe to drop. Uh so that, you know, it doesn't feel like there's um a light that's needing us.

[00:09:22]>> Come on, Mike. Jenny, we we we like light at the end of the tunnel.

[00:09:26]>> We like hope. So, not super heartening news if you're waiting for the job market to improve. But Mike says it's not all bad news. There are some ways to make more money. Employers are working hard to hang on to good people and are willing to spend money if need be by way of salary increases.

[00:09:44]>> Okay, we'll take that if our current uh employers are valuing us a little more.

[00:09:48]>> That's the situation Sarah's in. She's had conversations with her bosses and they've told her they would like her to stick around, >> but she's kind of a job hopper at heart.

[00:09:56]Do you think she will?

[00:09:58]>> For now, she's trying to make the best of the role that she has by getting as much experience as she can while she's there.

[00:10:05]>> Yeah, I guess I'm just trying to squeeze it for squeeze out all the resources I can. That's I guess that's what I'm doing.

[00:10:12]>> So, she's channeling her inner koala.

[00:10:15]>> She's hugging that job.

[00:10:17]>> All right. Thanks, Jenny.

[00:10:18]>> Thanks, Paul.

[00:10:48]This is the Cost of living. I'm Paul Habshude.

[00:10:52]Not that long ago, if someone tucked into a can of sardines for lunch with some crackers, maybe a pickle, chances are they weren't, how to put this, young.

[00:11:03]At the risk of stereotyping, tinned fish is kind of an old guy thing. Or at least it was. With inflation hitting chicken and pork, not to mention beef, its prices are up 60% in the last 5 years.

[00:11:18]Well, canned seafood has started to look better for all ages.

[00:11:25]>> When Milo Blair was a teen, he ate a lot of sugary breakfast cereal, chocolate bars, and fast food.

[00:11:33]>> Poutine, Coke. I probably ate McDonald's like once a day.

[00:11:38]>> But near the end of high school, he decided to get swole. So, he started hitting the gym.

[00:11:46]Like I've definitely put on a crazy amount of muscle from when I started working out to now. And I took a big jump when I started actually trying to hit protein goals rather than just eating whatever I wanted.

[00:11:58]>> At the age of 20, Milo has ditched the junk food. Instead, he fills up on eggs, cottage cheese, and canned tuna.

[00:12:08]>> I mean, I don't eat it every day, but when I eat it, I probably eat three cans. So maybe like 6 to nine cans a week.

[00:12:20]>> Compared to other types of meat, prices for canned tuna are still a bargain, and Canadians are gobbling it up. Between 2021 and 2024, tuna sales increased by more than 500%.

[00:12:37]And we're also trying other types of tinned fish.

[00:12:41]>> Razor clams, baby scallops, baby eelss, sardines, the whole lot.

[00:12:47]>> Jonathan Lrad owns Tinmonger in Toronto, a tinned seafood retailer. And it's selling 30% more sardines today than 3 years ago. Jonathan says these stinky little fish are no longer considered grandpa food. In fact, many of his customers are in their 20s and 30s.

[00:13:08]>> They come in with an attitude towards protein that I definitely didn't have at that age. So now, you know, food is measured by the grams of protein, which I never used to have a clue how many grams of protein in a chicken breast or whatever.

[00:13:20]>> This has 17 g of protein.

[00:13:23]>> There's over 110 g of protein. I'm not kidding you.

[00:13:26]>> A lot of that is being driven by social media. ONE KILO OF SARDINES >> where there's no shortage of reals about the magic of sardines.

[00:13:37]>> I do notice a few days after eating sardines, my fine lines, wrinkles, and stuff are a lot better.

[00:13:43]>> This is skincare in a can, y'all.

[00:13:45]>> There's a Reddit group for tinned fish lovers or afficionados and a fad where the only thing you eat for three days are sardines. It's called the sardine fast. That sounds like combining two things I don't love. Like fasting is not super fun and and sardines, you know. No, there's uh not not for me. No.

[00:14:09]>> Dylan McKay is a professor of nutrition and chronic disease at the University of Manitoba. He says another reason demand has gone up. Roughly 3 million Canadians are now on weight loss drugs like Ompic and that's changing our eating habits.

[00:14:26]those medications tend to enhance satiety, so you feel fuller sooner um and so you eat less.

[00:14:33]>> He says people who are rapidly losing weight need to be careful not to lose muscle, so they reach for higher protein foods.

[00:14:43]And now that cheaper generic versions of Ozmpic are available in Canada, Dylan thinks the craze for canned fish is here to stay.

[00:14:53]But there is such a thing as eating too much protein.

[00:14:59]>> Most people are already getting enough protein, right? And so you don't want to be uh breaking the bank to get more protein than you're really getting any health benefit from.

[00:15:09]>> That's what happened to Milo Blair when he started to bulk like the Hulk. He was eating 200 g of protein a day and he didn't feel so good. like I just felt like sluggish and like my my body just never felt right. So I was like, "Okay, maybe this is maybe I went overboard."

[00:15:29]And you know, my mom also said that my breath was like really bad.

[00:15:34]>> H might have been the tuna for the cost of living. I'm Danielle Nurman.

[00:15:57]This is the cost of living. I'm Paul Hversh.

[00:16:00]The thing Glenn Fley loves about going to a game, you never know what can happen. Like, he just missed seeing Joe Carter's walk-off home run in the 93 World Series. But he was there for the game before that.

[00:16:14]Other times he's been luckier.

[00:16:17]>> I was at the game where Sitler scored 10 points. So I was at that game which was incredible. I was at one of the Canada Cup games right behind the bench and sitting beside me Eddie Belffor and that the lineup for the second period sitting in front of me was Gretky Messier and uh Gretzky handed my wife a puck. So that one I'll always remember.

[00:16:35]>> When he heard the World Cup was coming to Canada, he knew tickets would be pricey but he also knew he had to go.

[00:16:42]the World Cup doesn't come to your backyard every day.

[00:16:46]When his friends found out he got tickets, >> a lot of them are surprised I was able to get them and so I think they're like, "Wow, how'd you do it?" But then they were also No one ever asked me how much.

[00:16:54]I I I I said to them they were a lot but and that was enough.

[00:16:57]>> Who are these friends of his that they're not nosier? How much is a lot?

[00:17:02]>> $1,300 a ticket.

[00:17:06]>> And he got two. That's 2,600 for the pair. The World Cup will cost nearly double what he paid for Oasis last year, which until now was the next most expensive ticket he'd ever bought. But for him, it's worth it.

[00:17:21]>> The whole world's involved. You're like, literally, it's the probably the biggest sporting spectacle of all. And I don't know, it's just very, very intoxicating.

[00:17:30]It's it's so easy to get swept away and forget about all the stuff that gets it gets it to us. All the stuff that gets it to us. There's the rub. The World Cup for any host country comes with strings.

[00:17:50]Canada will host 13 World Cup games.

[00:17:52]Seven in Vancouver, six in Toronto. And the price tag for governments isn't cheap.

[00:17:58]Originally, Toronto figured the cost for all of its matches would be maybe 45 million. Vancouver was estimating around 250 million.

[00:18:07]Now, the cost to host all 13 games is estimated to be more than a billion dollars.

[00:18:15]All that money is now also bound up with the organization that puts on the World Cup, FIFA. If you don't know much about soccer's international governing body, >> FIFA's reputation is is mud in in many parts of the world.

[00:18:29]Stefan Simonsky is a professor of sport management at the University of Michigan and he co-hosts the podcast Soccernomics.

[00:18:37]FIFA's mandate is to govern and develop the game of soccer globally. A big chunk of the money it gets from events like the World Cup goes towards building new pitches, supporting grassroots programs.

[00:18:49]But in the past, there have been questions about how FIFA spends some of its money. Its reputation took a big hit in 2015 when more than a dozen FIFA executives were criminally charged. This was after a year'sl long corruption investigation by the US Department of Justice. It eventually seized $21 million from the bank accounts of former officials. Fast forward to today and just in the last month or so, a key executive and one of South America's biggest soccer power brokers is now back under the microscope for allegedly funneling millions that were supposed to go to national soccer federations to himself.

[00:19:24]>> The money has been intended to go for the development of grassroots soccer in those developing nations, which would be actually pretty good thing on balance.

[00:19:34]So, in some sense, FIFA is a well-intentioned organization or a well-intentioned structure.

[00:19:40]>> FIFA says in the last decade, it has cleaned up its act.

[00:19:44]Stefan has his doubts and concerns about the lack of transparency around where the money goes.

[00:19:51]This year's World Cup is expected to be the biggest money generating event in sports history.

[00:19:57]FIFA's annual revenue is projected to top 9 billion.

[00:20:01]That's almost double what the Paris Olympics brought in.

[00:20:05]The World Cup itself is also bigger than ever. 64 teams instead of 48. That's added more games to the schedule and boosted all of FIFA's revenue streams.

[00:20:16]TV rights, sponsorship deals. As for tickets, prices are up. Sales are expected to bring in three times what they did for the last World Cup. The most expensive seat for the championship match and cutter, for example, sold for around $1,600.

[00:20:34]The price this year is nearly $11,000.

[00:20:38]The big jump in ticket prices isn't making FIFA friends with some fans who say they're being priced out of the game of the people, but that doesn't mean the stadiums won't be full.

[00:20:48]>> We, the consumers, love it. We just absolutely love it. And and yeah, we get a lot out of it. So, you know, this is going to be our fouryearly fix and we will be absolutely, you know, a go and we'll get huge amounts of pleasure out of it.

[00:21:06]>> Stefan has given a lot of thought to his own soccer fandom. When he watches the World Cup, he wonders if he's turning a blind eye to the questions he has about whether FIFA has truly cleaned up its act.

[00:21:19]But he's also rooted for England every four years for the last five decades.

[00:21:25]watching the World Cup is in his DNA.

[00:21:28]>> It's a genuine moral dilemma that we're involved in. And I think it's important to be aware of it. I think it's important to be honest about it.

[00:21:36]>> If Canada is going to be honest about hosting the World Cup, he thinks a good place to start is with the money.

[00:21:43]Whenever a place wants to host a mega event, it will trot out studies that say the economy will be the true winner.

[00:21:49]That every dollar spent will generate like three extra dollars. This is called the multiplier effect. Toronto says the World Cup will bring 940 million in positive economic output to the GTA.

[00:22:02]When Stephan hears numbers like that, >> well, there's a highly technical economics term for this, which I don't know if your listeners will permit it, but it's called When the economy is going okay, all you're doing is moving around the deck chairs. You're shifting one form expenditure from one activity to another. So there really isn't going to be an overall boost to the Canadian economy. If anything, actually there's a slightly negative multiplier because a lot of people are going to be avoiding places in Canada where there are World Cup games because they know there's going to be a World Cup game there. People who would have gone won't go.

[00:22:37]>> That negative multiplier effect can happen because of something economists call crowding out. A city only has so many hotels and restaurants. In places like Vancouver and Toronto, they're often full regardless of whether a big event is in town or not, especially in the summer. Maybe those people take their spending somewhere else just to avoid the crowds. So instead of trumpeting the economic benefits of these kinds of events, Stefan thinks government should just shoot straight with people.

[00:23:06]>> It's a billion dollars spent on what?

[00:23:08]Spent on hosting a big party. And Canada is going to be at the center of the biggest party in the world. Is that good for Canadians? Yeah, probably. Actually, probably Canadians will like the idea that the whole world is going to be focused on Canada and the US and Mexico for a few weeks.

[00:23:27]>> The eyes of the world trained on Canada for a month. Stefan says that does have value. Maybe someone likes the looks of Canada as a place to visit or even live.

[00:23:38]But for the economy as a whole, >> in broad terms, talking about the effect on the Canadian economy, for example, this is a drop in the bucket. It's a pretty meaningless event.

[00:23:51]>> Canada has a $3 trillion economy and more than 500 billion in annual federal spending. So Stefan says hosting 13 World Cup games is just a blip. at least for the economy >> that's hard to comprehend because it's the most popular social event on the entire planet. So it's a there's a disconnect in our minds between the social significance of this event and its financial impact broadly on society.

[00:24:18]>> He says yes a billion dollars is a lot of money and it should be spent wisely but how we think about that money can also be a matter of perspective. the revolution in economic thinking from the 1970s onwards where everything became market oriented and free markets and businesses here everything's a business this led to this view that if anything is important it must involve a large sum of money and I think the the World Cup gives the line to that that it it actually you know you can be terribly important without actually involving very much money and people there's this disconnect in people's minds and they we need people to get over this we people to start realizing that can I say as an economist there's more to life than money >> if a country like Canada wants to get in bed with FIFA he says the discussion in his mind is less about economics and more about ethics and as a lifelong footy fan he has spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to balance the parts of the game he loves the parts he doesn't >> it's like having very good sausages if you like sausages then you know that they can be very tasty and You can order them and think of them as great. Do you want to see how the sausage is made? Probably not a good idea.

[00:25:37]>> Some fans care about how the sausage is made. Others don't. They just want to go to the world's biggest sporting event and enjoy the party. The one thing they can all probably agree on, rooting for Canada to beat Bosnia and Herzgavina in the home opener.

[00:26:14]That's all for the show. The cost of living is based in Calgary. The show is produced by Daniel Nurman, Jenny D.

[00:26:18]Roio, and Jennifer Keane. On the faders this week, Philly Jeff Kyok. I'm Paul Habvershrude. Thanks for listening.