Canada reported a record high of 997,000 job vacancies
This week, Statistics Canada released the results of the Job Vacancy and Wage Survey report for the second quarter of 2022. This new report showed that employers from all sectors were actively looking to fill nearly one million (997,000) job vacancies in the second quarter. This is the highest quarterly number on record: 5.7%. Let’s review the highlights of this report.
Vacancies are calculated as the number of vacant positions as they correspond to total labour demand.
Table of contents
Job vacancies rising in six provinces
From the first quarter to the second quarter job vacancies rose in the following six provinces:
- Ontario (+6.6% to 379,700);
- Quebec (+2.4% to 248,100);
- British Columbia (+5.6% to 163,600);
- Alberta (+4.4% to 100,900);
- Manitoba (+5.2% to 29,300);
- Nova Scotia (+6.0% to 22,400).
Further, New Brunswick saw a drop in job openings (-6.1% to 15,200), while the remaining provinces saw little change. In addition, the economic regions with more than 10,000 open positions in the second quarter were:
- Banff-Jasper-Rocky Mountain House and Athabasca-Grande Prairie-Peace River in Alberta (+16.6% to 12,500),
- Ottawa (+13.1% to 41,300),
- and Winnipeg (+10.8% to 19,800) in Manitoba.
Record number of job vacancies in 3 sectors
The number of vacant jobs in the professional, scientific and technical services sector reached 74,600 in the second quarter. This means it went up 7.9% from the first quarter of 2022 and 79.1% higher than in the first quarter of 2020. Also, over half of the sector’s job openings in the second quarter of 2022 were located in the economic regions of:
- Toronto (21,100) in Ontario,
- Montréal (10,700) in Quebec,
- and Lower Mainland – Southwest -which includes Vancouver- (10,500) in British Columbia.
In addition, professional jobs in the natural and applied sciences experienced an increase in vacancies of 13.3% to 51,100. According to Statistics Canada, payroll employment in the sector has been trending upward since the first quarter of 2015.
Other sectors
– Healthcare and social assistance
There was little change in the number of job vacancies in the healthcare and social assistance sector between the first and second quarters of this year (135,300 to 136,100). However, this sector has increased to almost 29% year over year.
The report also showed that lately, staff shortages in the health care sector have led many hospitals to announce temporary reductions in services. This includes their emergency rooms.
– Accommodation and food services
Job vacancies in the accommodation and food services sector rose a significant 12.7% (+16,800) to 149,600 vacant jobs in the second quarter. This is the highest job vacancy rate across all sectors and is particularly pronounced in the Kootenay region of British Columbia.
Moreover, the increases in vacancies were spread across many occupations including:
- food counter attendants, kitchen helpers and related support occupations (+29.8% to 79,100);
- cooks (+37.7% to 29,500); and
- food and beverage servers (+38.9% to 26,300).
– Retail trade, construction and manufacturing
The number of job openings in retail trade (112,700), manufacturing (85,900) and construction (82,900) was little changed from their respective record highs of the previous quarter.
However, it is important to mention that healthcare, social assistance, accommodation and food services represented 56.9% of all job vacancies in Canada in the second quarter.
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