The City of Toronto businesses and workers are slowly bouncing back after the COVID pandemic.
Toronto businesses are slowly recovering following the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a City survey.
A Toronto Employment Survey in 2023 recorded 1,535,290 jobs post-pandemic citywide, which was an increase of 50.690 jobs, or a 3.4 per cent increase from 2022.
Total employment is approaching the pre-pandemic total of 1,569,800 in 2019, a difference of 2.2% per cent, or 34,510 jobs, according to the survey.
City workers are back on the job unlike those at many companies and work places.
“Toronto’s economy continues to recover from the record-breaking job losses of 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the survey states.
This year, employment increases over 2022 were observed in Community and Entertainment sector, with a 12.4 per cent increase, compared to institutional, which rose 6.2 per cent, office work with 5.8 per cent and the retail sector with a 1.6 per cent rise.
The survey said there was a decrease in jobs of 1.6 per cent in the manufacturing category.
Many places are still getting back to where they were before the pandemic.
The survey counted 72,530 establishments in 2023, an increase of 730 establishments, or one per cent from 2022. In 2023, 7,580 new establishments opened in the city.
The City has been conducting the annual survey of Toronto business establishments since 1983 and the data is used to monitor economic activity and provide information for policy and decision making, or planning municipal infrastructure.
It said there were 601,010 jobs in Toronto’s downtown in 2023, the highest employment count reported in the last five years.
“Downtown grew faster than the citywide average of 3.4 per cent, gaining 36,020 jobs, or 6.4 per cent,” according to the survey. Since the loss of 47,350 jobs in 2020, downtown has been able to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic gaining 63,700 jobs.”
Thousands of workers, mostly downtown office staff, are still working remotely from at home.
There were declines at some of the major centres, including a loss of 530 jobs at the Yonge-Eglinton Centre, followed by Scarborough Centre with 400 jobs and Etobicoke Centre, which lost 180 jobs. The North York Centre gained 1,000 jobs.
In 2023, establishments surveyed reported 14.2 per cent having active employees working remotely, with 309,570 jobs reported as remote. This is 10.1 per cent of all Toronto establishments, and 20.2 per cent of employment in the city.
Most of the remote workers, or 74 per cent, were employed in the office sector.
“The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have slowed employment growth,” according to the study.
The survey, which was taken from May to October 2023, was conducted in-person by a team of surveyors, allowing for visits to all businesses across the city.