Canada ranks 4th globally for highest employee turnover

With an average of 16 per cent, Canada ranks among the top countries in terms of employee turnover, according to a study by LinkedIn.

That’s fourth behind France (21 per cent), the United Kingdom (17.6 per cent) and Australia (17.5 per cent), but worse than the United States (13 per cent).

It’s also above the global average of 12.8 per cent, found the study, which analyzed data from half-a-billion professionals.

Global turnover rates

The top global reasons for employees leaving are a lack of opportunity to advance (45 per cent), dissatisfaction with senior management (41 per cent) and the work environment or culture (36 per cent).

And the tech, retail and media sectors have the most “liquid” workforces globally, found LinkedIn.

High-demand and rising compensation within the tech industry led technology (software) to take the “top” turnover spot (16.9 per cent), as was the case globally. Retail — a historically high-churn sector — came in a close second with 16.5 per cent, with the rise of e-commerce and the decline of brick-and-mortar storefronts driving attrition rates higher.

This was notably followed by government, education and non-profit at 15 per cent, with one of the highest rates globally.

Sectors with highest turnover rates — Canada

Turnover rates are drawn from LinkedIn’s member data in 2017. It calculates turnover by taking the number of professionals who left their company in a given population (such as the retail sector, the restaurant industry, or data analysts), then divides that number by the average amount of people in that given population in 2017.

Professionals are considered to have left their jobs if they provide an end-date for their position at a company (excluding internal job changes within the same company).

Contractors and other non-full-time-employees (such as interns and students) were excluded, along with any positions that start and end on the same date.