Job vacancies in Canada hit record high in health care and social assistance sectors

Statistics Canada has released its payroll employment, earnings and hours, and job vacancies report for August 2022.

This report measures how many employees in Canada’s labor force are currently paid, how much money they earn, and how many hours they work.

The report also monitors vacancies or positions previously held by an employee that are currently vacant for some reason.

There were 958,500 vacancies in Canada last August. Overall, the report found little change from data released in July, but a substantial change from August 2021, when there were 919,200 vacancies.

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Healthcare hits record number of job vacancies

The report shows a new record for job openings in the healthcare sector. In August 2022, there were 152,000 vacancies in the health care and social assistance sector. This is a 0.4% increase from the June and July data for a total of 6.4%.

The lack of available staff in hospitals has forced some to temporarily close their emergency rooms or reduce other services.

Canada relies heavily on immigration to fill vacancies in the health care system. A quarter of registered nurses and 36% of physicians in Canada were not born in Canada. However, foreign-trained healthcare professionals may have difficulty obtaining proper licensing from Canadian authorities, making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to find work in their field and reducing pressure on the health system.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is taking steps to facilitate the immigration of internationally trained healthcare workers, such as removing some of the barriers for doctors who are already in Canada on a temporary resident visa .

Professional, scientific and technical services increase wage employment

There was a slight increase in payroll employment in the scientific and technical professional services sector. Total payroll employment in this sector increased by 5,200 in August, or 0.4%. British Columbia and Ontario recorded the largest gains, while Alberta and Quebec each filled more than 500 vacancies.

Most of the payroll employment gains occurred in the computer systems design and related services and management industries, as well as scientific and technical consulting services, with an increase of 1,200 positions. In particular, computer systems design is outpacing the overall industry growth rate with increases of 65,900 positions filled since September 2021.

The number of job vacancies fell to 59,600 in August, which is in line with data from the same period last year.

Wages are rising but do not match the consumer price index

Compared to August 2021, wages posted an overall growth rate of 3.2%, slightly higher than the 3% year-over-year growth in July. The growth rate may reflect a change in wages, the composition of employment and the number of hours worked. In this case, there was little change in the number of hours worked, across all sectors, in the month-to-month or year-to-year calculations.

During the same period, the consumer price index (CPI) posted a growth rate of 7%, more than 50% higher than the average wage growth rate. This means that the price of goods and services exceeds the average Canadian income.

The sector with the largest wage gains is the service sector. For example, finance and insurance occupations experienced annual growth of 13.9%, and company and enterprise management occupations experienced a 10.5% wage increase.

The goods-producing sector and the services-producing sector also posted high levels of wage growth above 3%. This includes industries such as manufacturing, mining, oil and gas extraction or, with slower growth, logging, construction and forestry.

Health care wages have grown at a slower pace of 0.9% since August 2021.

Wage losses were recorded in educational services, down 2.4%, and in information and cultural services, down 1.1%.

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