Job opportunities are shrinking for many workers as vacancies slump

It’s getting a lot harder to find a job in Canada.

For the ninth-straight month, the number of job vacancies declined in October, falling to 513,000 and sending the job vacancy rate to its lowest level in seven years, according to Statistics Canada. At the same time, competition for jobs is heating up – there were 2.8 unemployed people for every job vacancy that month, the highest level outside of the pandemic since 2017.

It’s all a far cry from early 2022, when more than one million jobs sat empty as employers boosted wages to fill positions, spurring the Bank of Canada to start raising interest rates to cool inflation, and by extension, the insatiable demand for workers. With unemployment on the rise and the economy on its heels, the bank cut its benchmark rate earlier this month by half a percentage point to 3.25 per cent.

The good news is that there are still plenty of openings in certain sectors, but going into 2025 Canada’s job market is wildly uneven, according to a new report from job posting site Indeed Canada.

While job postings for all occupations are down from their peak during the pandemic, the number of openings in the health care sector in December were still 46 per cent higher than just prior to the pandemic. Likewise, job openings in education and engineering are also elevated.

It’s a much different story for those looking for work in occupations in the arts and communications, or technology and science, with the number of job openings well below where they were in February, 2020.

Decoder is a weekly feature that unpacks an important economic chart.