Statistics Canada released its monthly Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours report today, painting a picture of a stabilizing Canadian labour landscape.
A core highlight of the release was the holding pattern observed in Canadian job openings. Total job vacancies held steady at 500,300 for the month of March. While this represents a resilient short-term demand for labor from employers, the broader trajectory indicates that the severe post-pandemic labor crunches have normalized; on a year-over-year basis, overall job vacancies decreased by 16,500, or roughly 3.2%.
On the compensation front, changes in average weekly earnings continued to reflect a complex mix of shifting variables. StatCan notes that current earnings growth trends are being impacted by a range of underlying economic factors, including direct wage adjustments, evolving base-year effects, and structural changes in the composition of overall employment across industries.
Meanwhile, actual time spent on the clock contractually flattened out. Average weekly hours worked stood at 33.4 hours in March. This represents little to no statistical change on a month-over-month basis, though it edges down 0.3% when compared to the same period a year ago.
