The number of vacancies in Quebec stood at about 208,000 in the fourth quarter, representing a decrease of 12%, or nearly 30,000 positions, compared to the same period a year earlier, indicated Thursday the Quebec Institute of Statistics (ISQ).
The decline was particularly marked in accommodation and food services, where the job vacancy rate — the number of job vacancies expressed as a proportion of labor demand — fell from 12.4% to 8, 4%, said the provincial agency. For all sectors, the job vacancy rate decreased to 5.1%, after being 6% in the last three months of 2021.
Aside from the accommodation and food services sector, the largest declines in the number of job vacancies were observed in the manufacturing groups; administrative, support, waste management and remediation services; and retail.
The average hourly compensation for vacant positions in Quebec increased by 10% between the fourth quarter of 2021 and that of 2022, to settle at $24.00. In comparison, the increase was 6.3% for all salaried jobs, to $31.71.
Three administrative regions stand out with increases of at least 15% in the average hourly compensation offered in vacant positions: Outaouais and Lanaudière (+19%) as well as Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean (+15%) . In these three regions, the average hourly compensation offered in vacant positions increased by at least $3 per hour.
According to the ISQ portrait, some 110,000 vacant positions required a secondary school diploma or less in the fourth quarter, while approximately 68,000 unemployed people had this level of education during the same period. At the same time, approximately 32,000 vacant positions required a university education, a level of education held by 35,000 unemployed Quebecers in the fourth quarter.
We observe a decrease in job vacancies essentially in jobs: requiring at most a high school diploma (-28,500), full-time (-20,400) and permanent (-23,600), requiring no year of experience (-15,000) and requiring between one and two years of experience (-12,000), and manual type (-17,000).
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