‘Job seekers market’ in Canada as vacancies soar 72% higher than before pandemic | Financial Post

Employers had 874,000 unfilled positions, a decline of 9.3 per cent from October and the second consecutive monthly drop from a peak of about 988,000 vacancies in September, Statistics Canada reported on Jan.

The report is positive, because a rebalancing of the labour market will be necessary to calm worries about rampant inflation, which spiked to 4.8 per cent in December from a year earlier, according to Statistics Canada’s consumer price index.

To be sure, vacancies remain unusually high even after November’s decline.

Statistics Canada tallies job vacancies along with its monthly sweep of company payrolls, a supplementary measure of employment that complements the agency’s more timely Labour Force Survey .

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said this week that the strength of the labour market as one of the factors that convinced him and his deputies that it was almost time to start raising interest rates.

The latest Statistics Canada data show that firms involved in transportation and warehousing are having the hardest time finding workers.

Hotels, bars and restaurants led the hiring in November as most restrictions on high-contact businesses had been eased.

The Bank of Canada’s updated economic outlook sees economic growth slowing to an annual rate of two per cent in the first quarter from almost six per cent at the end of 2021.

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