Job vacancies in Canada decline for first time since pandemic

By Ovunc Kutlu

ISTANBUL (AA) - Canada's job vacancies in the third quarter of this year posted its first quarterly decline since the coronavirus pandemic, according to the nation's statistical authority on Monday.

Employers in Canada were actively seeking to fill 959,600 vacant positions in the third quarter, down 3.3% from the record high reached in the second quarter when the figure stood at 992,200, Statistics Canada said in a statement.

The job vacancy rate, which corresponds to the number of vacant positions as a proportion of total labor demand, was 5.4% in the third quarter of 2022, down from 5.7% in the second quarter, it added.

On an annual basis, the number of job vacancies in the July-September period this year was 8.3% higher than the same period of last year.

It was 72.7% higher than the first quarter of 2020, when the World Health Organization had declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic on March 11, 2020.

Job vacancies decreased the most in professional, scientific, and technical services with a decline of 15.4% in July-September compared to the record high reached in the previous three months and also marked the first decline in the sector since the fourth quarter of 2020.

In healthcare and social assistance, on the other hand, vacancies increased 9.5% to an all-time high of 150,100 in the third quarter, the statistics agency indicated.