The number of job vacancies reached just over one million in early April, up more than 40% from the same time a year earlier, Statistics Canada said Friday.
According to the federal agency, Canadian employers were actively seeking to fill 1,001,100 job vacancies, up 23,300 from March and 308,000 from April 2021.
The job vacancy rate, which measures the number of job vacancies as a proportion of all jobs, was 5.8% in April, down from 4.4% in the same month last year.
Vacancies hit a record high in several sectors, including construction, which saw vacancies hit 89,900 in April, up 12,000 from March and 27,200 from March. April 2021.
The number of job vacancies also reached a record high for the professional, scientific and technical services sectors; transportation and storage; finance and insurance; arts, entertainment and recreation; and real estate services and rental and leasing services.
The health care and social assistance sector saw job vacancies drop to 125,200 in April from a high of 147,500 in March, but those unfilled positions still showed a 21-year increase. .3% compared to the previous year.
Increase in salaried employees
This did not prevent the number of employees receiving remuneration or social benefits from their employer, called “salaried employees”, from increasing by 126,000 (+0.7%) in April. The increases were spread across all provinces except Quebec, which saw little change.
In April, for the first time, paid employment in all provinces had returned to the level observed in February 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic, or had exceeded this level, indicates Statistics Canada. “As of April, all provinces had relaxed their public health measures related to seating capacity limits, allowing most businesses to operate without pandemic restrictions.”
Compensation up 4%
Average weekly earnings were $1,170 in April, essentially unchanged from March. However, it increased by 4% compared to a year earlier, which is slightly lower than the 12-month increase observed in March (+4.2%). All provinces posted 12-month increases in average weekly earnings in April, particularly Nova Scotia (+7.8% to $1,030) and New Brunswick (+6.4% to $1,073). $). Nova Scotia was the only province where growth in average weekly earnings exceeded its provincial growth in the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
Nearly two-thirds of all sectors posted year-over-year increases as the national CPI rose 6.8% over the same period. Retail trade (+11.7% to reach $715), professional, scientific and technical services (+9.7% to reach $1,680), manufacturing (+8.2% to reach $1,264) and wholesale trade (+7.4% to $1,417), which together account for almost a third of all payroll employees, were the only sectors where 12-month average weekly earnings increased more than the CPI in April.
The arts, entertainment and recreation sector (-4.5% to $711) was the only sector to register a 12-month decline in average weekly earnings, likely partially attributable to the largest increase over 12 months of salaried employment among lower-paid hourly employees (+66,800; +50.8%) compared to fixed-wage employees (+9,700; +15.1%) in this sector .
With Duty