Half a Million Open Jobs, and None of Them Moving

Job vacancies have held near 501,000 for seven months. Beneath the flat line, demand is rotating toward manufacturing and Alberta, and away from retail, Ontario and Quebec.

Canadian employers reported 501,000 vacant positions in July, the seventh consecutive month of little change, according to Statistics Canada payroll and vacancy figures released Sept. 24. The job vacancy rate, which measures open positions as a share of total labour demand, was 2.8 percent. The agency says the rate has stayed between 2.7 and 2.8 percent since April 2025.

A flat vacancy count is easy to dismiss. For staffing firms it is revealing, because vacancies are the closest public proxy for unfilled client demand. More than a year at the same level says employers are neither racing to add capacity nor pulling requisitions. They are replacing, not expanding.

A caveat on timing: these figures describe July, before the Labour Force Survey recorded job losses of 42,000 in August and 68,000 in September. They capture the market at the height of summer, not as it stands today.

Payrolls inch up

Payroll employment, the count of employees receiving pay from an employer, rose by 26,100 in July, or 0.1 percent. Over the year, payrolls were up 171,900, a gain of 0.9 percent. Only eight of 20 sectors added workers.

Retail trade led with 3,900 positions, followed by accommodation and food services at 3,600 and professional, scientific and technical services at 2,500. Within professional services, accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping and payroll services accounted for 2,300 of the 4,700 jobs the sector has added since May.

Public administration was the biggest drag, losing 5,700 positions after four months of gains, as federal public administration fell by 6,400. Statistics Canada attributes the recent swings largely to temporary hiring for the 2026 Census, a reminder that even government leans on a flexible workforce when a project has a fixed end date.

Wholesale trade lost 4,100 positions. Its payrolls are now 15,400 below their August 2024 peak.

Where the openings are moving

The national total hides real rotation. Compared with a year earlier, vacancies in manufacturing rose by 7,300, an increase of 22.1 percent. Vacancies in retail trade fell by 5,500, or 10.0 percent.

The manufacturing figure deserves attention. In the Labour Force Survey, manufacturing employment in September was little changed from a year earlier. Rising openings alongside flat headcount usually point to a skills or availability gap rather than a demand surge: plants want specific trades and shift workers they are not finding. That is a classic opening for industrial and skilled-trades staffing.

Geography is shifting too. Alberta reported 73,100 vacancies, its highest level since September 2024, while Ontario and Quebec posted declines. The same split runs through the September household survey, in which Alberta added jobs and Quebec lost them.

A tighter ratio, for the wrong reason

There were 2.9 unemployed people for every vacancy in July, down 0.3 from a year earlier. On the surface, that suggests a tightening market. Statistics Canada says otherwise: the improvement came mainly from 105,200 fewer unemployed people, not from more openings.

RBC Economics made a related point in an August note, as reported by HRD Canada. Summer job gains, combined with a labour supply held back by retirements and lower immigration, pushed the unemployment rate down even as hiring demand stayed flat.

A ratio that tightens because the candidate pool shrinks behaves differently from one that tightens because clients are hiring. The first raises sourcing costs without raising order volume. The second raises both.