Canadian Payroll Employment and Job Vacancies Report for June – Forest Economic Advisors, LLC

On Thursday, Statistics Canada (StatCan) released its Payroll Employment, Earnings and Hours and Job Vacancies report for June. The number of employees receiving pay and benefits from their employer—measured as “payroll employment” in the Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours—decreased by 47,300, or 0.3%, in June. The decline follows five consecutive monthly increases from January to May, with a cumulative gain of 147,600 jobs, or 0.8%, over the period. Year-over-year, payroll employment was up 110,400, or 0.6%, in June.

Monthly payroll employment decreases were recorded in 11 out of 20 sectors, led by retail trade, down 15,100, or 0.8%; manufacturing, down 10,600, or 0.7%; construction, down 7,700, or 0.7%; and administrative and support, waste management, and remediation services, down 6,600, or 0.8%. Offsetting those losses was an increase in mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction—the lone sector to record a monthly increase, up 2,500, or 1.2%. The remaining eight sectors were little changed.

In June, job vacancies were little changed at 554,000. Year-over-year, job vacancies were down by 190,500, or 25.6%. The job vacancy rate—the number of vacant positions as a proportion of total labor demand—held steady at 3.1% and was 1.1 percentage points lower than in June 2023, when it was at 4.2%.

StatCan notes that there were 2.6 unemployed persons for every job vacancy in June, up from 2.5 in the previous month, largely due to an increase in the number of unemployed persons. This was the fifth consecutive monthly increase in the unemployment-to-job vacancy ratio. This ratio has seen an upward trend since its lowest level of 1.0 in July 2022, indicating cooling in the labor market over the period.

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