Job vacancies fell by 69,900 (-9.0%) to 706,100 in the third quarter, marking the fifth straight quarterly decline from the record high reached in the second quarter of 2022 (990,900), according to a report released Monday by Statistics Canada.
Edmond Dantès
The federal agency also said payroll employment rose by 117,600 (+0.7%) in the third quarter of 2023, the 10th consecutive quarterly increase. However, payroll employment has increased at a slower pace than the population aged 15 years and older (from the Labour Force Survey) since the fourth quarter of 2022. In the third quarter of 2023, the population aged 15 years and older rose by 261,100 (+0.8%).
“The quarter-over-quarter growth rate in total labour demand (the sum of filled and vacant positions) was 0.3% in the third quarter, down from 1.0% in the third quarter of 2022,” said StatsCan.
“The job vacancy rate—which corresponds to the number of vacant positions as a proportion of total labour demand—decreased to 3.9% in the third quarter of 2023, down from 4.3% in the previous quarter. This was the fifth consecutive quarterly decline and the lowest rate since the first quarter of 2021 (3.8%).”
While job vacancies decreased in the third quarter of 2023, the number of unemployed persons (from the Labour Force Survey) increased by 79,500. As a result, there were 1.7 unemployed persons for every job vacancy in the third quarter, up from 1.4 in the previous quarter, and 1.1 in the third quarter of 2022. Despite these continued increases, the unemployment-to-job vacancy ratio in the third quarter of 2023 remained below pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels, which were typically above 2.0, said the report.
“Consistent with these findings, mainly the easing in labour market tightness, recent results from the Canadian Survey on Business Conditions for the fourth quarter of 2023 indicated that 40.3% of businesses expect at least one labour-related obstacle over the next three months, down from 47.7% in the third quarter. The most commonly expected labour-related obstacle in the fourth quarter was recruiting skilled employees (29.4%),” it said.
On a year-over-year basis, the average offered hourly wage grew at a faster pace in the third quarter (+5.8% to $25.60) compared with the second quarter (+4.4% to $25.10), but at a slower pace compared with the third quarter of 2022 (+7.3% to $24.20). In comparison, year-over-year average hourly wages of all employees (from the Labour Force Survey) grew 5.0% in the third quarter of 2023, up from 4.8% in the second quarter (data used in this section are not seasonally adjusted), said the report.
“Part of these increases were due to a shift in the relative composition of job vacancies from lower- to higher-offered-wage occupations. Using a method that holds the composition of job vacancies by occupation at the third quarter of 2022 average, the year-over-year average offered hourly wage grew 3.5% in the third quarter of 2023, up from 3.2% in the second quarter, but down from 5.5% in the third quarter of 2022,” it said.
“Occupations with high annual growth of their average offered hourly wage in the third quarter of 2023 included general farm workers (+10.5% to $19.00) and welders and related machine operators (+8.7% to $28.65). In contrast, estheticians, electrologists and related occupations (-7.1% to $17.60) and professional occupations in business management consulting (-5.2% to $36.55) saw their offered hourly wages fall on a year-over-year basis in the third quarter.”
Mario Toneguzzi
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 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
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