The job vacancy rate was unchanged in British Columbia in September compared with one year prior, according to Statistics Canada data released December 17.
B.C. was the only province not to see a drop in its job vacancy rate over this period, with the number of the number of vacancies remaining at 32,400.
B.C.’s vacancy rate was slightly above the national average job vacancy rate of 1.6%. There were 229,200 job vacancies across Canada in September – a drop of 0.3 percentage points compared with September 2012’s 270,500 vacancies.
Alberta had the greatest job vacancy rate at 2.7%, followed by 2.1% in Saskatchewan.
B.C. was also the only province to see a drop in the ratio of the number of unemployed individuals to the number of job vacancies. The province had 5.2 unemployed people for every job vacancy – a slight decrease of 0.1 individuals compared with September 2012, when there were 5.3 unemployed people for every vacancy.
Across Canada, September saw 6 unemployed individuals for every job vacancy, down 0.8 from 5.2 in September.
Prince Edward Island had the highest rate of unemployment compared with job vacancies, with 15.5 individuals for every available job. Alberta had the least, with 2.1.
Job vacancy rates were calculated using three-month average vacancies ending in September 2013. The figures include all unemployed individuals with all levels of previous work experience.
