Growing Durham Together banner featuring three child care professionals collaborating in an early learning centre, representing resources for employers.

Resources for Child Care Employers

Recruiting and retaining qualified educators is essential to providing high-quality Early Learning & Child Care. Jobs First Durham gives child care operators access to local workforce information, recruitment tools, and practical resources that support informed hiring and workforce planning.

Explore current hiring trends, understand the local workforce, promote your employment opportunities, and help people interested in Early Learning & Child Care discover careers with your organization.

Support Your Workforce Goals

Whether you are actively recruiting, reviewing your compensation practices, planning for future workforce needs, or looking for ways to support your existing team, start with the resource that best matches your goals.

Submit a Job Posting

Explore Local Workforce Insights

Create Your Free Jobs First Durham Account

Promote Your Employment Opportunities

Jobs First Durham brings together local opportunities from more than 50 online sources, helping Durham Region job seekers discover openings through one searchable platform.

If you post an opportunity on a website indexed by Jobs First Durham, it will generally be added to the Jobs First Durham Job Board within hours of appearing on the original website. You do not need to create a separate Jobs First Durham posting.

If you do not use one of the indexed websites, you can submit your opportunity directly to Jobs First Durham at no cost. An account is not required. Direct submissions are generally reviewed within two business days.

Jobs First Durham lists positions located in Durham Region. Including a complete and accurate work location helps ensure your opportunity appears properly on the Job Board and Job Map.

View Indexed Job Websites and Employer FAQs

Submit a Job Posting at No Cost

Write Job Postings That Get Results

A clear, complete, and easy-to-read posting helps candidates understand the opportunity, determine whether it meets their needs, and find it more easily when searching online.

Complete postings also contribute to more accurate local labour market information, helping employers and workforce partners better understand hiring demand, wages, required skills, and recruitment trends across Durham Region.

Include

A clear and recognizable job title
Use a title candidates are likely to recognize and search for, such as Registered Early Childhood Educator, Early Childhood Assistant, Child Care Supervisor, or Supply Educator.

Information about your organization
Briefly introduce your organization, its approach to Early Learning & Child Care, and the community or families it serves. Give candidates a sense of the workplace they may be joining.

Responsibilities
Describe the day-to-day duties of the position. Explain how time will be divided between classroom, programming, administrative, supervisory, communication, or other responsibilities.

Program or age group
Identify the type of program and, where applicable, the age group with which the successful candidate will work.

Compensation
Provide the hourly wage or annual salary. For hourly positions, include the anticipated number of hours per week and explain whether wage enhancements or other applicable funding are included.

Benefits and workplace supports
Identify health and dental benefits, paid vacation or sick time, pension participation, professional-learning opportunities, employee assistance programs, tuition support, or other benefits available.

Work location
Provide an accurate location so candidates can consider transportation, commuting time, parking, and transit options. A complete location also helps the opportunity appear correctly on the Jobs First Durham Job Map.

Required qualifications
Clearly identify the education, experience, College of Early Childhood Educators registration, First Aid and CPR certification, screening requirements, or other qualifications genuinely required for the position.

Required and preferred skills
Separate essential requirements from qualifications that would be considered an asset. This can help avoid discouraging otherwise qualified candidates from applying.

Employment duration
State whether the opportunity is permanent, temporary, contract, seasonal, casual, or a supply position.

Employment type and schedule
Indicate whether the position is full-time or part-time and include the expected hours, shifts, days of work, and scheduling requirements.

Application instructions
Explain how to apply, what documents are required, the application deadline, and whom candidates can contact if they require accommodation during the recruitment process.

Avoid

  • Unfamiliar internal titles, abbreviations, or acronyms
  • Phrases such as “guru,” “rockstar,” or “superstar”
  • Special characters or unnecessary wording in the job title
  • Large, difficult-to-read blocks of text
  • Combining essential and preferred qualifications into one long list
  • Listing education or experience that is not genuinely required
  • Leaving out the wage, location, schedule, or employment type
  • Using generic descriptions that do not explain what the employee will actually do
  • Requiring candidates to search elsewhere for basic information about the opportunity

Download the Job-Posting Checklist

Submit Your Job Posting

Know your responsibilities: Employers should ensure their postings comply with current employment standards, accessibility, human rights, privacy, and other applicable requirements. Visit the Government of Ontario’s Employment Standards guide for provincial information and seek professional advice when necessary.

Plan with Local Workforce Insights

Jobs First Durham transforms information collected from online job postings and job-seeker activity into timely, local labour market insights.

Use these tools to compare your recruitment practices with the local market, understand hiring demand, identify frequently requested qualifications, review advertised wages and benefits, and make informed workforce-planning decisions.

Labour Market Insights

Explore local job demand, advertised wages, frequently requested skills, hiring employers, and job-seeker search activity. Information can be filtered by occupation, sector, geography, and time period to help you focus on the workforce trends most relevant to your organization.

Use these insights to:

  • Compare advertised wages and benefits
  • Identify frequently requested skills and certifications
  • Monitor changes in local hiring demand
  • Understand what job seekers are searching for
  • Support recruitment, compensation, and training decisions

Labour Force Report

Review broader economic conditions affecting Durham Region’s workforce, including employment, unemployment, labour force participation, population, and employment by industry.

The monthly report uses Statistics Canada information for the Oshawa Census Metropolitan Area—which includes Oshawa, Whitby, and Clarington—as the best available monthly proxy for Durham Region. It provides important context for understanding the broader environment in which child care employers are recruiting and planning.

Talent Map

Explore the geographic concentration of people connected with selected occupations. The Talent Map can support decisions about recruitment outreach, geographically targeted campaigns, transportation considerations, and where employment opportunities should be promoted.

The map presents aggregated workforce information and does not identify or display individual job seekers.

Recruit and Retain Your Workforce

Recruitment is only one part of building a strong Early Learning & Child Care workforce. Retaining qualified employees requires an ongoing commitment to supportive leadership, competitive compensation, employee well-being, professional learning, recognition, and opportunities for career development.

Compare Local Wages and Benefits

Use Jobs First Durham Labour Market Insights to review advertised wages, benefits, skills, and qualifications for similar positions. Understanding the local market can help your organization evaluate whether its opportunities are competitive.

Support Professional Learning

Connect educators and other child care professionals with the Region of Durham’s professional-learning opportunities and resources.

Supporting ongoing learning can strengthen professional practice, employee engagement, leadership development, and the quality of care provided to children and families.

Help Employees Pursue Additional Qualifications

Employees interested in earning an ECE diploma or advancing their careers may be eligible for financial assistance through the Early Childhood Educators Qualifications Upgrade Program.

Eligible applicants may be able to access an education grant, travel grant, or training allowance while working toward an ECE diploma and eligibility for registration with the College of Early Childhood Educators.

Understand Professional Responsibilities

The College of Early Childhood Educators’ employer resources provide information about employing RECEs, verifying registration through the public register, professional standards, professional regulation, and the Continuous Professional Learning program.

Employers can support professional practice by ensuring RECEs have the time, resources, and workplace support needed to meet their professional responsibilities.

Create Your Personalized Jobs First Durham Dashboard

A free Jobs First Durham account allows you to personalize the workforce information available through the platform and keep the occupations, skills, and trends most relevant to your organization in one place.

Create an account to:

  • Follow occupations important to your workforce
  • Monitor local hiring and wage trends
  • Explore employer demand and job-seeker activity
  • Access workforce reports and planning tools
  • Return easily to the information most relevant to your organization
  • Manage your selected resources through a personalized dashboard

Creating an account is not required to submit a job posting. An account is most useful for employers who want to monitor workforce information and use Jobs First Durham as an ongoing recruitment and planning resource.

Learn How to Create Your Account

Watch the account-creation video or follow one of the step-by-step guides below.

Step-by-Step Video Instructions