The quest for workers: A new portrait of job vacancies in Canada
by Diane Galarneau, Howard Krebs, René
Morissette and Xuelin Zhang
Human Resources Development Canada and Business
and Labour Market Analysis Division, October 2001
The evolving workplace series,
no. 2
The job vacancy rate is an important economic indicator that summarizes
companies' hiring intentions and indicates the future direction of labour demand.
The new Workplace and Employee Survey (WES) allows us to estimate the number of
job vacancies in the Canadian economy for the period surveyed.
In 1999,
13% of establishments (or 95.4 thousand) reported 286,415 job vacancies. The job
vacancy rate was 2.6%. This rate is relatively high, partly because 1999 was a
year of strong growth in both total employment and gross domestic product. Higher
unemployment rates were associated with lower vacancy rates for the Atlantic provinces,
Quebec and British Columbia. Conversely, lower unemployment rates were associated
with higher vacancy rates in Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario. In 1999, there were
relatively high job vacancy rates both in establishments requiring less-skilled
labour (such as Retail trade and consumer services industries) and in those with
strong skill requirements.
Positions that remain vacant for at least four
months are used to approximate the number of positions that remain vacant for
structural reasons. According to the WES, 46% of vacant positions were in this
category resulting in a long-term job vacancy rate of 1.2%. Overall, the characteristics
of positions vacant for at least four months were similar to those of vacant positions
in general. The majority of such positions were in the production category. In
profit-oriented establishments, 50% of long-term vacancies originated from Retail
trade and consumer services industries.
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