Workopolis looks at online job postings, the Labour Force Survey and other data from Statistics Canada, and numerous key economic indicators to create a snapshot of the current state of the labour market in Canada – and to predict coming shifts.
Statistics Canada – Labour Force Survey – September, 2013
Employment was up by over 212,000 jobs in September compared with 12 months earlier. The national unemployment rate fell to 6.9%. This marks the first time that the unemployment rate has been below 7% since the start of the recession in late 2008.
There were employment gains in finance, insurance, real estate and leasing as well as natural resources and agriculture in September. At the same time, there were declines in manufacturing and public administration.
Online job postings
Online job postings are up by 5% in September over the previous month. There were increased job advertisements in all regions except for the territories in September. And the declines seen in the territories were by such a small number of jobs as to not be statistically relevant.
Similarly, September saw an increase in job postings for every industry across the board except for Engineering and Science – and at 1%, this decline were also too small to be significant.
It also appears that holiday hiring is ramping up. We have seen an 8% increase in part-time postings over the past few months, and these are also up 8% over this time last year. Retail job postings are also up almost 40% over the past two months.
Forecast – Hiring trend to continue
Because we’re seeing an increase in online job postings across regions and industries, and most of the other key economic indicators that we watch closely are indicating continued growth, Workopolis is predicting positive hiring to continue throughout the month of October. We expect to see further increases in employment coming.
