Question Period Note: JOB VACANCY DATA FOR THE FIRST QUARTER OF 2025

On June 17th, Statistics Canada released job vacancy data for the first quarter of 2025 from the Job Vacancy and Wage Survey (JVWS).

• Our government is committed to protecting and supporting workers in this period of uncertainty and change in our labour market.
• We will advance new opportunities, transform to a one-economy agenda, and invest to ensure Canadians have the skills they need to fill in-demand jobs.

• Data collected in the JVWS are critical for the analysis of labour market tightness, in conjunction with data from the Labour Force Survey.
• The job vacancy rate refers to the share of jobs that are unfilled out of all available payroll jobs. It represents the number of job vacancies expressed as a percentage of labour demand; that is, the sum of all occupied and vacant jobs.
• In addition to the number of job vacancies for which employers are recruiting externally, the JVWS collects information on vacancies by occupation, the minimum level of education and work experience required, the wage or salary offered, whether the vacant positions are full-time, part-time, permanent, temporary or seasonal, and the duration of recruitment efforts.
• The JVWS questionnaire is distributed on a quarterly basis to about 100,000 business locations operating in Canada (out of a population of close to 1.2 million locations) that have at least two employees (excluding religious organizations, private households, international and extraterritorial public administrations, and government administrations).
• Statistics Canada will release the job vacancy data from the JVWS for the second quarter of 2025 on September 16, 2025.

Additional key facts
By occupation (data NOT adjusted for seasonality):
• Compared to the first quarter of 2024, job vacancies fell by 31,200 (-19.2%) among sales and service occupations. Within this broad occupational group, retail salespersons and visual merchandisers (-3,900 to 12,100), food counter attendants, kitchen helpers and related support occupations (-3,800 to 22,900), and other customer and information services representatives (-3,600 to 5,900) saw the largest year-over-year drops in vacancies.
• Compared to the first quarter of 2024, the number of job vacancies among trades, transport and equipment operators and related occupations declined by 27,000 (-23.7%), led by construction trades helpers and labourers (-4,400 to 8,500) and transport truck drivers (-3,700 to 11,800).
• In the first quarter of 2025, job vacancies in health occupations also fell (-19.1% or -17,600) on a year-over-year basis. This decrease was led by key nursing occupations: registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses (-7,700 to 21,000), nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates (-4,900 to 16,100), and licensed practical nurses (-2,700 to 10,000).

By minimum level of education sought (data NOT adjusted for seasonality):
• On a year-over-year basis, there were fewer job vacancies for all four educational levels sought by employers in the first quarter of 2025. However, positions requiring a high school diploma or less drove the overall decrease in the total number of vacancies, declining by 66,800 (-22.3%), and accounting for 60% of the overall year-over-year decline in job vacancies.

By province (data adjusted for seasonality):
• Between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025, job vacancies fell in Quebec (-9,500 to 120,400), British Columbia (-6,600 to 85,100), Alberta (-4,300 to 61,700), Manitoba (-1,200 to 19,800), New Brunswick (-700 to 8,900) and in the Northwest Territories (-300 to 800).
• The number of vacancies was little changed in the remaining provinces and territories.

Unemployed people per vacancy (data adjusted for seasonality):
• In the first quarter of 2025, there were 2.9 unemployed people per job vacancy, an increase compared to 2.8 in the previous quarter and the record low of 1.1 in the second quarter of 2022.
• Comparing unemployment and job vacancies can give an indication of how easily unemployed workers find jobs and if workforce skills are in line with those required by employers. A low unemployment-to-job vacancy ratio can indicate that it may be relatively harder for employers to find workers.

Offered hourly wages (data NOT adjusted for seasonality):
• Between the first quarters of 2024 and 2025, the average offered hourly wage grew 6.1% to $28.90, driven partially by a shift in the composition of job vacancies towards higher-offered-wage occupations. In comparison, year-over-year average hourly wages of all employees (as measured in the Labour Force Survey) grew 3.6% in the first quarter of 2025.
• Holding the composition of job vacancies by occupation fixed at the average of the first quarter of 2024, the year-over-year growth in offered hourly wages would have been 4.7%.

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