Vacancies reached an all-time high in June, agency reports
Canada saw its third straight month when vacant positions totalled more than 1 million, reaching an all-time high in June.
That month saw a vacancy of 1,037,900 positions nationwide, representing a 3.2% increase from May. This was mainly impelled by a growing number of vacancies in the health care and social assistance sector (149,700 jobs), StatCan said.
With StatCan’s revised methodology removing seasonal variations from the equation, current trends show that “recent month-over-month increases in job vacancies were not attributable to seasonal patterns, indicating that job vacancies have been trending upward since December 2020 after somewhat stabilizing in October and November 2020,” the agency added.
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The nationwide job vacancy rate stood at 5.9% in June, which was at par with the record-breaking rate reached in September 2021, StatCan said.
Total labour demand, which is the sum of filled and vacant positions, reached a record high of nearly 17.7 million in June, 1.4% higher than May levels and 9.4% higher on an annual basis.
Job vacancies also exceeded the number of unemployed persons in multiple regions.
“The unemployment-to-job-vacancy ratio was below 1.0 in four provinces in June, namely in Quebec (0.6), British Columbia (0.7), Saskatchewan (0.8), and Manitoba (0.9),” StatCan said. “Newfoundland and Labrador (2.7) continued to have the highest unemployment-to-job-vacancy ratio among provinces.”
