Paul Martin commentary
Saskatchewan employers are creating jobs at a faster rate than the economy is generating people to fill those spots.
That’s the finding of the latest job vacancy report from StatsCanada which shows that Saskatchewan was the only province in the country to post an increase in the number of jobs going unfilled in March.
Nationally, the trend is still headed lower. But, in this province, the number of vacancies rose by 1,700 – an 11-percent increase over February – to a total of 16,500.
That works out to 3.1-percent of the province’s total work force. That’s the third highest job vacancy rate in the country, a bit behind PEI and BC.
This also represents a change in direction for this particular metric. Saskatchewan has always had one of the higher job vacancy rates but the number was gradually diminishing as population growth produced more prospective workers to fill these positions. But now we have an increase suggesting population growth has now fallen behind the pace employers are maintaining in terms of job creation.
