In June this year, there were umpteen job vacancies in Canada’s food service and accommodation sectors.
Statistics Canada held a survey regarding the vacant job positions. And it was established that Canada had at least 129,000 vacancies for people working in the food and accommodation services. There were far more job openings in this sector compared to vacancies in health care and social assistance. After these two sectors, it was the retail trade sector that registered a good number of job openings.
In June, there were nearly 815,800 job vacancies in food services. This number has increased by 22 percent as compared to the vacancies in May.
Statistics Canada started collecting data for job vacancies in October last year. And since then, it is the month of June that has come up with one of the highest job vacancy rates. The job vacancy rate means the proportion of vacancies compared to the total number of job positions in a specific sector. The overall vacancy rate was 5 percent in June.
As restaurants started opening around May, employers were proactive in filling the vacant positions. They were actively involved in recruiting employees. Food and accommodation services had a vacancy rate of over 12 percent.
The Canadian provinces, British Columbia and Quebec had the highest rates of job vacancies. While Nova Scotia and Manitoba are the provinces that had the lowest rates.
Labor shortages aggravated due to COVID-19
As per the RBC report, Canada will continue to face shortages of labor in the coming times. Several workers belonging to service sectors have left their jobs after being affected by the pandemic.
Provinces might face problems while hiring people for lower-paid job positions. The average wages in the food services sector have been 57 percent lower than the wages of other services jobs. This may explain the reason behind the increasing job vacancies.
