Canada witnessed over 900,000 job vacancies in the 3rd quarter of 2021. The data was made public in the new Statistics Canada report.
The primary factor in the increase is the improving stability in the country’s economy after lifting travel restrictions. This also occurred because the country’s overall employment is increasing, and it does not have enough resources to fulfill the requirement.
The overall vacancy is record-breaking as it is around 62% higher than the 3rd quarter of 2019. Saskatchewan witnessed the highest increase proportion-wise. After the province, Quebec and Ontario recorded a high vacancy rate.
The increase has been observed in 18 out of 20 major industries Q3 2019 to until now. Just 5 out of them comprised 68% of the increased volume. Manufacturing, Hospitality and food, health care and social assistance, retail trade, and construction were the five fields with the highest vacancies.
The healthcare industries are experiencing significant labour shortages. In Q3 2021, there have been 118,200 job openings, and payroll job growth reached pre-COVID levels in December 2020, indicating that the sector is experiencing an unemployment problem. Because of Canada’s elderly population, there’s an increasing demand for personnel in this field even before the outbreak. Registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses (22,800) and nursing aides, orderlies, and patient service associates (24,100) were among the occupations with the biggest openings in Q3 2021.
The hospitality sector saw a 25% of overall increase. That happened mostly because businesses were reopening in summer, and even during usual days, it was hard to find the labour to fulfill the requirement at that time. The shortage may also indicate that there are jobs in Canada for immigrants. That will ultimately help them in their pursuit of immigration to Canada.
Businesses offering more wages is the one way to tackle the situation as of now. The report indicates that the matter has been escalated to the level where the emphasis on increasing wages is so much than before. On the one hand, inflation has increased by over 4% in the past two years, whereas the wage growth has also set some records. It exceeded the Consumer Price Index growth (inflation) in 155 out of 373 professions (research done subject to data availability during that phase). Kitchen staff, retail salespeople, nurse staffers, orderlies, and health services affiliates, and building trades’ helpers and workers are some of the fields that witnessed a growth of over 9% in wages during this duration. All the rest of the professions also saw an increase of over 8% in their hourly wages.
The report was concluded with the information that the situation of the country’s labour market is improving in the 3rd quarter. For instance, the unemployment rate is just more by 0.3 points than what it was before the pandemic (5.7 percent).
It is also important to take into account that the country is implementing a lot of new changes and standards amid the increasing concern of Omicron. That may eventually hamper the situation in which the country is operating now and may be reflected in the upcoming reports by Statistics Canada.
