'Faced with a tight labour market and hiring difficulties, some employers respond by raising the offered wages of their vacancies'
The number of unfilled job positions in the third quarter of year 2022 was just off the record high tallied the previous quarter, according to Statistics Canada (StatCan).
Employers in Canada were actively seeking to fill 959,600 vacant positions in Q3, down 3.3 per cent from the 992,200 openings in Q2.
The job vacancy rate also dropped to 5.4 per cent from 5.7 per cent quarter-over-quarter. However, that same rate for Q3 was up from 3.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Employment rose by 108,000 (0.6 per cent) in October, recouping losses seen from May to September, StatCan previously noted.
Higher pay was a factor. The average offered hourly wage increased by 7.5% to $24.20 in the third quarter, compared to the same period the previous year, according to the government agency.
“Faced with a tight labour market and hiring difficulties, some employers respond by raising the offered wages of their vacancies,” says StatCan. “Part of this increase was due to a shift in the relative composition of job vacancies from lower-offered-wage to higher-offered-wage occupations.”
However, long-term vacancies – vacancies for which recruitment efforts have been ongoing for 90 days or more – rose to 38.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2022 from 28.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2020.
Provinces, sectors
Among provinces, Quebec (-6.7 per cent to 232,400), British Columbia (-4.7 per cent to 155,400) and Ontario (-3.6 per cent to 364,000) recorded job vacancy decreases in Q3 as compared to Q2.
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Meanwhile, the number of vacancies was up in Manitoba (+10.7 per cent to 32,400) and Saskatchewan (+7.5 per cent to 24,300), while it was relatively stable in the other provinces, says StatCan.
B.C. (6.2 per cent) and Quebec (5.8 per cent) also continued to have the highest job vacancy rates among the provinces in the third quarter, as has been the case since the second quarter of 2019.
Meanwhile, job vacancy rate was lowest in Newfoundland and Labrador (3.8 per cent).
Among sectors, job vacancies declined in professional, scientific and technical services (-15.4 per cent to 63,100); accommodation and food services (-6.5 per cent to 140,000); and manufacturing, retail trade, finance and insurance, and wholesale trade (-8.7 per cent to 78,500).
In construction, job vacancies stood at 81,100, virtually unchanged from the previous quarter.
Meanwhile, job vacancies in healthcare and social assistance increased 9.5 per cent to an all-time high of 150,100 in the third quarter.
The number of payroll job vacancies across all sectors in August (958,500) was little changed from July (964,000), StatCan previously noted.