Nova Scotia’s minimum wage climbs to $17 an hour on October 1, right as the retail and hospitality rush that needs extra hands every November and December gets underway. If you’re trying to work out how to hire seasonal staff without turning it into a paperwork mess six weeks later, here’s the direct answer: bring them on as a fixed-term hire with a clear end date, pay them the same wage and vacation pay as anyone else on your payroll, and close out the paperwork the same week the season ends, not sometime after.

Why a Seasonal Hire Isn’t the Same as Your First Employee

A seasonal hire and your first employee get set up almost the same way on paper. You still need a payroll account with the Canada Revenue Agency, the federal tax agency, if you don’t already have one. You still register with the Workers’ Compensation Board of Nova Scotia, the provincial workplace injury insurance program, and you still pay at least minimum wage. What I covered in my post on what to sort out before hiring your first employee in Nova Scotia still applies here, term or no term.

Where a seasonal hire is genuinely different is the end date. Under Nova Scotia’s Labour Standards Code, an employer does not have to give the written notice normally required to end someone’s job, as long as the person was hired for a set term or task of 12 months or less and their job ends when that term or task ends. A six-week hire through the holiday rush fits that description, as long as you actually treated the job as a fixed term from the offer letter onward, not as an open-ended role you quietly let go later.

What You Actually Owe a Seasonal Employee

Do I still owe vacation pay on a six-week job?

Yes. Nova Scotia sets vacation pay at a minimum of 4 percent of gross wages, and that applies the same to a seasonal worker as it does to full-time staff, starting from their very first paycheque. There’s no minimum length of employment before it kicks in. Pay it out on every cheque, or hold it and pay the full amount with their last one. Either way, it has to be paid.

Do I need to give notice when the season ends?

Not if the job was a genuine fixed term to begin with. Nova Scotia’s rule exempts a job hired for a set term or task of 12 months or less that ends when the term or task ends. If instead you keep bringing someone back informally, extend them past the date you gave them, or never actually put an end date in writing, the arrangement can start looking like an indefinite job, and the usual notice scale, which runs from one week after three months on the job up to eight weeks after ten years, can end up applying anyway.

Where to Actually Find People for a Few Weeks of Work

Start with your current staff. Ask them directly whether they know someone looking for holiday hours. It’s the fastest and cheapest way to fill a seasonal role, and a referral from someone already on your floor tends to work out better than a stranger off a job posting. Students home from Dalhousie, Saint Mary’s or NSCC for the winter break are also worth a direct ask if your hours can bend around exams, and a lot of them are already looking by November.

Local community groups for Bedford, Dartmouth, Burnside and the Halifax peninsula see a steady run of seasonal job posts every fall, and they cost nothing to use. If you need several people fast and don’t have time to screen a stack of applications yourself, a local staffing agency can hand you a shortlist of people already available for short-term work, for a fee that’s usually worth it against the hours you’d otherwise spend interviewing.

Steps to Hire and Let Go Cleanly

1. Set the exact start and end date before you post the role, and put both in writing in the offer.
2. Say plainly in the offer that the position is a fixed term ending on that date, not an ongoing role, so nobody is confused in December.
3. Register the hire the same way you would any employee: a CRA payroll account, WCB Nova Scotia coverage, and a wage at or above the $17 floor that takes effect October 1.
4. Track hours and pay out vacation pay at a minimum of 4 percent of gross wages, either on every cheque or with the final one.
5. Confirm the last work date about a week ahead of time, and pay out any vacation pay owing within 10 days of that final day, as Nova Scotia’s Labour Standards Code requires.
6. Issue a Record of Employment, the federal form that lets a former employee apply for Employment Insurance, within five calendar days after the end of the pay period in which their job ends.
7. Ask before they leave whether they’d come back next season. Someone who already knows your till, your stockroom and your regulars is worth more in November than a new hire starting cold.

What This Actually Costs You

Run the numbers before you post the job. A seasonal employee working 20 hours a week at $17 an hour for six weeks earns $2,040 in wages. Add 4 percent vacation pay and you’re at roughly $2,122, before the employer’s share of CPP and EI, which applies to a seasonal worker exactly the same as anyone else on payroll. Multiply that by however many people you need for the season, and you have a real number to plan around instead of a guess.

The paperwork itself costs time, not money. Registering a new hire, tracking their hours and filing a Record of Employment when they finish is an afternoon of admin per person, not a specialist job. What it buys you is a seasonal worker who gets their government benefits without delay, and a business that isn’t sorting out a labour standards complaint in January because an end date was never actually put in writing.

The Bottom Line

A seasonal role is still a real job, even at six weeks. Set it up as one from the offer letter through the final paycheque, and the wind-down in January takes care of itself. The owners who get burned aren’t usually the ones who hire seasonal help. They’re the ones who never wrote down when the job was supposed to end. For more on hiring and running a business here, including what the October 1 minimum wage increase costs your payroll and how to keep good staff once you’ve trained them, the Halifax Business Blog has other posts worth a look.

A short seasonal crew changes your risk picture too, even for a few weeks. More hands behind the counter or in the stockroom during your busiest stretch is exactly when a slip, a break-in or a damaged shipment tends to happen, so it’s worth a quick call to confirm your policy already accounts for the extra people and the extra traffic before the rush starts, not after.

About the author. Rayanur Rahman writes about running and growing a business in Halifax. He is a commercial insurance broker with Western Financial Group in Bedford, Nova Scotia, and works with businesses of every kind across the Halifax Regional Municipality. Reach him at 902-321-1712 or book a 30 minute call.

Sources: Government of Nova Scotia: When the Employer Ends the Employment. Government of Nova Scotia: Vacation Time and Vacation Pay. Government of Nova Scotia: Minimum Wage. Canada Revenue Agency: Record of Employment. Photo by EqualStock IN on Pexels. Photo by Nam Phong Bùi on Pexels. Prices and program details checked September 2026 and can change. General information only.