Employers seeking close to one million people in Canada

Employers in Canada were actively seeking to fill 959,600 vacant positions in the third quarter, down 3.3 per cent from the record high reached in the second quarter (992,200), said Statistics Canada in a report released Monday.

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The number of job vacancies in the third quarter remained elevated; it was 8.3 per cent higher than in the third quarter of 2021 and 72.7 per cent higher than in the first quarter of 2020, said the federal agency.

“The job vacancy rate—which corresponds to the number of vacant positions as a proportion of total labour demand (the sum of filled and vacant positions)—was 5.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2022, down from 5.7 per cent in the second quarter. It was up from 3.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,” it said.

“There was an average of 1.1 unemployed persons for each job vacancy in Canada in the third quarter of 2022, similar to the record low reached in the second quarter. In comparison, there was an average of 2.3 unemployed persons for each job vacancy in the first quarter of 2020. The unemployment to job vacancy ratio has declined steadily since the first quarter of 2016, along with the increase in the job vacancy rate.”

In professional, scientific and technical services, job vacancies declined 15.4 per cent from the record high reached in the second quarter to 63,100 in the third quarter. This was the first decline in the sector since the fourth quarter of 2020, said StatsCan.

It said there were 140,000 job vacancies in accommodation and food services in the third quarter, down 6.5 per cent (-9,700) from the second quarter. As has been the case since the summer of 2021, the job vacancy rate in the accommodation and food services sector in the third quarter (10.0 per cent) was highest among all sectors, despite the decline in that quarter.

“In manufacturing, job vacancies declined 8.7 per cent to 78,500 in the third quarter. This was the first decrease in this sector since the third quarter of 2019 (data on job vacancies were not collected in the second and third quarters of 2020). From the third quarter of 2019 to the third quarter of 2022, labour demand held steady as a decrease in payroll employment (-33,000) was offset by an increase in job vacancies (+32,500), resulting in an increase in the job vacancy rate from 2.8 per cent in the third quarter of 2019 to 4.8 per cent in the same quarter of 2022,” explained Statistics Canada.

(Mario Toneguzzi is Managing Editor of Canada’s Podcast. He has more than 40 years of experience as a daily newspaper writer, columnist, and editor. He worked for 35 years at the Calgary Herald, covering sports, crime, politics, health, faith, city and breaking news, and business. He works as well as a freelance writer for several national publications and as a consultant in communications and media relations/training. Mario was named in 2021 as one of the Top 10 Business Journalists in the World by PR News – the only Canadian to make the list)