economy
WORKERS ABOUND, BUT SOME CAN’T BE FOUND Despite a still-elevated unemployment rate, employers are finding it increasingly challenging to attract the employees they need.
One could be excused for thinking that labour market slack goes hand-in-glove with low job vacancy rates (that is, the proportion of all jobs and would-be jobs that employers cannot fill). It seems obvious enough: if there is a higher-than-average number of people actively looking for work then surely employers could have their pick, right? Well, in the current environment, that would be wrong. Across Canada, as well as here in British Columbia and the Lower Mainland, the job vacancy rate rose in Q1 2021 (the latest period in which we have data). In the Lower Mainland specifically, the job vacancy rate hit 4.3% in Q1 2021, up from 4.0% in Q4 2020. Though off of its all-time high of 5.1% in Q3 2018, the current vacancy rate reflects mismatches in labour supply and demand that currently exist.
More specifically, the biggest increases in the number of job vacancies here in the Lower Mainland over the two most recent quarters are in education (a 17% increase), management occupations (18%), and manufacturing and utilities (20%); each of these compares to an overall average increase in job vacancies of 6% over the same period. Because the sector-specific labour challenges that currently exist are a reflection of the uneven way in which our economic recovery is transpiring, our expectation is that the overall job vacancy rate will begin to level out through the balance of 2021. When this happens, we can feel more confident that the worst of our economic woes, at least as far as Covid is concerned, is behind us.
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