Employee growth among British Columbia’s biggest businesses owned by women has slowed for the third consecutive year, according to Business in Vancouver data.
Their employee base grew by an average of 6.9%.
The median employment change was 2.8%, the lowest since 2016. This suggests that larger companies higher on the list grew faster than their smaller counterparts.
In 2018, the top businesses owned by women increased their employee base an average of 8.5%; the median local employee growth was 7.8%.
While the 2018 statistics suggested that the increase in the number of staff was relatively even regardless of company size, this did not seem to hold true into 2019.
In the four years prior to 2019, the only time the employee growth rate approached zero was in 2016, when the average increase in staff numbers at businesses owned by women grew by only 0.9% while the median change was 0%.
Quantum Properties Group of Cos., tied at No. 20 on BIV’s Biggest B.C. Businesses Owned by Women list (page 10), recorded the largest one-year employment increase. The Abbottsford-based company’s number of employees increased 25% to 30 in 2019 from 24 in 2018.
Of the companies with five years of data available, Vancouver’s TPD (No. 1) had the largest five-year increase in employees: up 90.1% to 1,150 in 2019 from 605 in 2015.
Surrey-based Robar Industries Ltd. (No. 13) recorded the largest employee decline over the five-year period, falling 31.3% to 66 in 2019 from 96 in 2015.
