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Jobs in Canada Vacancies held steady at 637,400 for December 2023, which marked the third straight month of little change.
The number of vacancies was 209,200 (-24.7%) less than in December 2022, and down 365,900 (-36.5%) from the record high of 1,003,200 in May 2022.
Total labor demand fell 0.4% in December compared to a month earlier, while the job vacancy rate (corresponding to the number of vacancies as a proportion of total labor demand) was largely flat at 3.6% in December 2023.
In December, there were 2.0 unemployed for every job vacancy, up from the 1.9 ratio recorded in each of the past three months.
The retail trade sector (-9,400; -13.8%) was the only one to record a decrease in vacancies in December, reaching 58,800 vacancies. That offset a rise of 7,400 in November.
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On an annual basis, job vacancies fell by 39,900 (-40.4%) in retail trade in December 2023, the largest decline across all sectors.
The retail trade vacancy rate was 2.8% in December, down 0.5 percentage points from November (3.3%) and down 1.9 percentage points from December 2022 (4.7%).
Two sectors – educational services (+3,800; +19.5%) and municipal services (+1,000; +33.4%) – saw growth, while there was little change in the rest of the 15 sectors.
For example, the health care and social assistance sectors saw a small change in job vacancies in December 2023 (125,900) for the fourth month in a row.
The health and social care job vacancy rate was 5.1% in December, little changed from a month ago but down 1.0 percentage points from a year earlier.
On a provincial basis, Ontario and Quebec saw a decrease in job vacancies. The former fell by 13,400 (-5.6%) to 224,200 in December, which partially offset the increase seen a month earlier (+21,500; +10.0%). The latter, on the other hand, fell -10,700 to 138,100 in December.
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Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island saw increases of 2,800 and 900, respectively, while numbers were relatively stable in other provinces.
On a year-over-year basis, the vacancy rate fell in nine provinces in December, including the two provinces with the highest rates in December 2022, namely British Columbia (where the vacancy rate fell from 5.2% to December 2022 to 4.2% in December 2023) and Quebec (where it fell from 5.2% to 3.5% over the same period).
British Columbia and Saskatchewan had the highest vacancy rates in December, each at 4.2%.
