Labour shortages in Canada appear to be mostly centred in jobs requiring little education, while employers finding it difficult to fill positions requiring higher levels of education probably aren’t facing challenges because candidates lack the necessary degrees, suggests a new research paper from Statistics Canada.

The paper, published on May 24, said that for every job vacancy requiring a university degree in the fourth quarter last year, there were at least two unemployed individuals with the necessary degree. In contrast, the study found the number of vacant positions requiring a high school diploma or less has exceeded the number of unemployed Canadians with equivalent education since the third quarter of 2021.

The findings suggest employers’ complaints about a labour crunch cannot, in general, be attributed to a national shortage of highly educated job seekers.

“To administer the proper treatment, you have to come up with the proper diagnosis,” René Morissette, the paper’s author and senior economist at Statistics Canada, said.

“The early diagnosis that we came up with focuses mainly on labour shortages. What this paper shows is that the early diagnosis was perhaps an over-simplification of reality and that we might need to come up with a more nuanced diagnosis of the problem,” he added.

In 2022, the number of job vacancies in Canada averaged 942,000, about two-and-a-half times the average of 377,000 in 2016. To address high vacancies and labour shortages, government officials and businesses often point to immigration as a solution. Indeed, shortages were a key reason behind the federal government’s decision last year to increase immigration targets that aim to bring in 500,000 newcomers annually by 2025.

Morissette’s paper states that for the 113,000 vacant positions in the fourth quarter last year that required a university degree, there were 227,000 unemployed Canadians and permanent residents that met the education criteria, out of which 123,000 were unemployed immigrants with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Pour lire la suite de l’article, cliquez ici.

Source: Financial Post, 26 mai 2023 par Naimul Karim