Labour shortage hits 34K workers
CALGARY Alberta employers are short nearly 34,000 workers, part of a job vacancy rate that’s hit record highs in a country economically thriving, says a business group.
The province’s numbers are in the middle of the pack, states the survey conducted by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and reflect the fragile economic recovery, the group’s Calgary spokeswoman, Amber Rudd, said Tuesday.
Some companies that let go valuable employees are finding it hard to replace them, she said.
“We did go through difficult times and we’re not anywhere near the boom levels,” Rudd said.
Nationally, there’s a labour shortage of 361,700 jobs, according to the CFIB survey that collected 2,033 business responses, the biggest number of unfilled spots it’s recorded to date.
That translates into a 2.8-percent job vacancy rate, the proportion of unfilled positions relative to all private sector jobs. In Alberta, that number is 2.2 per cent, the sixth highest in the country.
The demand is spread unevenly across the province’s economy and comes amid an unemployment level considered high: 7.3 per cent for Alberta.
“The smaller the business, the bigger challenge you’ll have finding people who are the right match for the job,” said Rudd.
Alberta industries facing the most significant worker shortages are transportation, construction and personal services.
About 65,000 people were looking for work in Edmonton. Calgary had 70,000 job hunters, down from 74,000 a month ago.
Alberta’s vacancy rate sits above Manitoba and Nova Scotia at 2.1 per cent, as well as Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island with vacancy rates of 1.9 per cent.
British Columbia had the highest vacancy rate measured in the report at 3.4 per cent, followed by Quebec at 3.1 per cent and Ontario at 3.0 per cent.
A survey done by recruiting company ManpowerGroup found 17 per cent of western Canadian employers across all sectors plan to increase employment in early 2018, while eight per cent expect to reduce it.