Canada experiences growth in number of employees

Christina Morillo

The number of employees receiving pay or benefits from their employer rose by 71,100 (+0.4 per cent) in January, following an increase of 53,700 (+0.3 per cent) in December 2022. Overall payroll employment has generally trended upwards over the previous five months, resulting in cumulative gains of 275,400 (+1. per cent) from September 2022 to January 2023, reported Statistics Canada on Thursday.

Payroll employment increased in six provinces in January, with the largest gains observed in Ontario (+17,700; +0.3 per cent), Alberta (+14,500; +0.7 per cent) and Quebec (+13,900; +0.3 per cent), added the federal agency.

Payroll employment continues to increase in January 2023

“Payroll employment in the services-producing sector increased by 79,000 (+0.6 per cent) in January. Gains were recorded in 12 of the 15 sectors, led by retail trade (+22,700; +1.1 per cent), transportation and warehousing (+12,800; +1.6 per cent) and public administration (+10,000; +0.8 per cent). Meanwhile, payroll employment declined in information and cultural industries (-11,200; -2.9 per cent) in January.

“Payroll employment in the goods-producing sector recorded little change in January. However, a decrease was observed in the construction sector (-7,600; -0.7 per cent), including non-residential building construction (-2,700; -2.2 per cent) and building equipment contractors (-2,100; -0.7 per cent).”

On a year-over-year basis, average weekly earnings grew 2.9 per cent to $1,185 in January, said StatsCan. Growth in January 2023 was higher than in December 2022 (+2.6 per cent), but lower than in November 2022 (+4.0 per cent).

“Job vacancies increased 3.4 per cent (+29,000) in January 2023, led by transportation and warehousing (+14,500) and health care and social assistance (+12,400). Concurrently, job vacancies decreased in professional, scientific and technical services (-6,200; -10.9 per cent), manufacturing (-4,200; -6.0 per cent) and educational services (-3,800; -14.1 per cent),” said the report.

“Overall, there were 883,200 job vacancies across all sectors in January. The monthly increase in January follows a general downward trend from June to December 2022. Compared with the peak reached in May 2022, job vacancies were down 12.0 per cent (-120,000) in January 2023.

“The job vacancy rate—which corresponds to the number of vacant positions as a proportion of total labour demand (the sum of filled and vacant positions)—was 4.9 per cent in January 2023, little changed from December 2022. There was an average of 1.2 unemployed persons for every job vacancy in January 2023. This ratio has remained virtually unchanged since August 2022. According to the Labour Force Survey, the unemployment rate held steady at 5.0 per cent in January and February 2023.”

Job vacancies rebound in January 2023 after trending down since June 2022