Even though the month of May 2021 encompassed a massive rise in public health-centered measures within the country, Canada’s foodservice supplying and accommodation sectors reported the highest number of recruitment managers browsing through potential employee portfolios. Amongst these, the healthcare divisions were identified to have the largest number of vacant positions.

The month of May alone spanned a very high and active hiring process by Canadian employers who conjointly scouted for about 671,000 workers. This was recorded to be the seventh consecutive month comprising such high employment rates. In comparison to alternate job openings, approximately 107,300 vacancies were discovered within the healthcare sector. This was followed by the food and accommodation services which reported about 78,000 openings and the retail sector with a close 73,800 vacancies.

One must understand the difference between vacancies, which is the approximated count of job openings, and the term vacancy rates, which gives a distinct calculation of the number of job openings as a proportion of the total number of vacancies.

Compared to all Canadian provinces, Quebec reported a whopping 5.1% job vacancy rate, standing at the highest as released by the payroll, job vacancies, and employment report curated by Statistics Canada. This was followed by 5% reported for British Columbia and a close follow-up by New Brunswick at 4.9%. In stark contrast to these rates, 2.8% was reported to be the lowest recorded rate denoted by Labrador and Newfoundland.

The highest rate was reported for the food and accommodation services division at a gross value of 7.8%, which could be accounted for challenges faced during the hiring process as well as the seasonal pattern of these recruitments taking place.

On the eve of many restaurants and hotel chains shutting down as well as social assistance services being forced onto employees, many hiring managers were uncertain about receiving news back from potential employees. This outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has had the local public reconsidering their lifestyle choices and increasingly worried about their health. Another reason for such high vacancy rates is also the sheer shortage of otherwise employed international students within these divisions.

The month of June witnessed somewhat of relaxation on the impending restrictions evident across the nation. As per statistical evidence, employment rates displayed a prominent upsurge recording a whopping 12% increase from the months of May to June. In this scenario, when mentioning Employment, we mean the number of working employees as job vacancy rates for the month of June aren’t made locally available to the public as of yet.

Immigration giving importance to support the reduction in Labor Force

With a steadfast and sharp rise in the country’s retirement levels as well as rates of people quitting their jobs, Canada will have to be at the forefront of giving maximum priority to immigration plans and processes. These two levels were found to be quite minor when considering the reasons for them being dissatisfaction faced by the individuals involved. Ever since the betterment of the Canadian economy as established in recent times, job-quitting levels are going to recover back as they were before the pandemic struck.

During the latter half of this year, the retirement rates that were delayed previously owing to the pandemic could witness a steady rise. Due to this, labor shortages are bound to increase tenfold all throughout the seasons of summer as well as fall in the Maple country.

The only option for the nation to surge back its labor force growth rates is to shift the entirety of its attention and focus on immigration.

Even though the nation has broken several immigration target group records, the rates of welcoming in novel immigrants and individuals potentially interested in settling within the country have been quite low when counted during the first few months this year. One spark of hope is how with the ushering in of about 35,000 novel PRs, this intake rate was seen to increase steadily. Even though we don’t have detailed accounts of the July rates, the reopening of the Canadian borders to all those PRs who have received approval has been increasing.

Keeping in mind the nation’s federal government target of ushering in a total of 401,000 fresh immigrants into the country, July onwards will have to witness the welcoming of approximately 43,000 novel PRs so that they can hit the target spot-on!