Canada's job vacancies hit record high

Ottawa, Dec 21 (IANS) The number of job vacancies in Canada reached has hit a record of 912,600 in the third quarter of 2021, according to official data.

The record-high job vacancies coincided with growth in overall employment and falling unemployment due to the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, Xinhua news agency quoted Statistics Canada as saying on Monday.

Statistics Canada's data shed light on some of the factors behind the monthly job vacancy data released previously, including sectoral and regional differences in unmet labour demand, changes in the occupation and skills profile of vacancies, and recent trends in the wages offered by employers.

Across all sectors, the total number of job vacancies was 349,700 more than that in the corresponding period of 2019.

Compared with the same period two years earlier, job vacancies were up in all provinces of Canada in the third quarter of 2021.

Job vacancies increased between the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2021 in 18 of the 20 major industrial sectors.

Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, and real estate and rental and leasing were the only sectors where vacancies were not up in the third quarter of 2021 compared with the same period two years earlier.

Five sectors - health care, construction, accommodation and food, retail trade and manufacturing - were driving the growth in job vacancies.

Increases in job vacancies can signal a number of changes in labour market conditions existing in different sectors and regions.

Vacancies increased more in low-wage occupations than in high-wage occupations between the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2021.

In the third quarter of 2019, 20 per cent of occupations with the lowest average wages accounted for 35 per cent of employees and 48.9 per cent of job vacancies.

In the third quarter of 2021, these same occupations represented 32.3 per cent of employees and 50.9 per cent of vacancies.

In contrast, the 20 per cent of occupations with the highest average wages represented 9.4 per cent of vacancies in the third quarter of 2021, down 1.1 percentage points from the same period two years earlier.