Tight job market

Demographics and the economy have a lot to do with the tight job supply, says Terry Price, OCT. Price retired from teaching full-time science with the York Region DSB in June 2005 but still teaches about 20 days a year.

Price, OSSTF District 16 (York Region) Occasional Teacher Branch President, is an elected member of the Ontario College of Teachers’ Council. “There’s a glut of teachers on the market today,” he says.

“Teachers aren’t retiring in the numbers they were 10 years ago and there are fewer children in schools. That’s simple demographics. And 10 years ago, we saw the 90 factor replaced with the 85 factor.”

In other words, the eligibility window for retirement – a teacher’s combined age and number of years teaching – dropped by five years. That induced many teachers to retire. “Suddenly, an unusually high number of positions opened up,” Price recalls.

Today, many teachers are not retiring at the 85 factor. “The stock market crash hit all savers and investors hard,” Price says. “A great many teachers are no longer in a position to retire since the huge reduction in retirement portfolios. That, too, has kept more veteran teachers in the classroom longer.”

The result is that newer members of the profession are competing for fewer jobs. Those already on crowded occasional lists consider themselves lucky to get daily supply work and even luckier to secure a long-term occasional teaching position.