The number of job vacancies recorded by Statistics Canada are at a four year low (job vacancy data collection began in January 2011). The number of unemployed persons has changed very little, and so we have a relatively high number of unemployed persons per job vacancy.
Even though the data is not seasonally adjusted, you can see an overall trend toward fewer job vacancies, especially since 2012.
As of March 2014, there were only 206,000 job vacancies for nearly 1.4 million unemployed workers in Canada, giving us 6.8 unemployed workers for every job vacancy. If you add underemployment into the mix, there were 2.9 million underemployed workers in Canada in March 2014 (three month average, seasonally unadjusted). That gives us a national underemployment to job vacancy ratio of 14.3.
There are very different trends in Ontario and Quebec. You can see that while Ontario has a higher number of underemployed workers per job vacancy than Quebec, this number is slightly better than it was in March 2011. On the other hand, Quebec’s ratio is higher in each subsequent March, and much higher in March 2014 than it was in March 2013.
Saskatchewan and Alberta boast relatively low ratios, but Saskatchewan saw a marked rise over last year. British Columbia’s unemployment to job vacancy ratio improved between March 2013 and March 2014, but their *underemployment* ratio worsened slightly.
If you’re interested in the number of underemployed workers in your province, and the resulting underemployed worker to job vacancy ratio, I’ve calculated the most recent numbers here.
| March 2014 | |||
| Seasonally unadjusted 3 month average | |||
| Underemployed | Job Vacancies | Ratio | |
| Canada | 2,946,545 | 206,200 | 14.3 |
| Newfoundland & Labrador | 65,821 | 2,700 | 24.4 |
| PEI | 19,561 | 500 | 39.1 |
| Nova Scotia | 96,907 | 4,400 | 22.0 |
| New Brunswick | 81,909 | 4,000 | 20.5 |
| Quebec | 684,505 | 37,100 | 18.5 |
| Ontario | 1,246,309 | 63,400 | 19.7 |
| Manitoba | 91,137 | 11,100 | 8.2 |
| Saskatchewan | 58,459 | 7,000 | 8.4 |
| Alberta | 216,606 | 46,300 | 4.7 |
| British Columbia | 383,557 | 28,800 | 13.3 |
If these numbers sound outrageous, that’s because they are. Recently in Nova Scotia, Giant Tiger received nearly 400 applications for 50 job openings. From the article: “Every individual that applied had great background in retail.”
Keep these numbers in mind this week (or next) as Jason Kenney announces changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker program, and every time an employer claims that they are unable to find workers in Canada.