A new report on job vacancies in Canada released by Statistics Canada this morning reveals that there are more job openings and fewer unemployed people competing for those jobs than there were at this time last year.

The report covers a three-month period ending in May. There were an average of 258,000 job vacancies over that time frame, which is 22,000 more than at the same time in 2011. Also, for each of those open jobs, there were 5.5 unemployed people in Canada this year. That ratio was 6.3 unemployed people per available job in 2011.

Statistics Canada attributes the reduction in the ratio of unemployed people to job vacancies both to an increase in jobs and a reduction in the number of people out of work. Both are good news for the Canadian labour market.

And while the latest Stats Can Labour Force Survey showed that the Canadian economy lost some 30,000 jobs in July, there was good new hidden there too. The real story is that there were roughly 50,000 fewer people working part-time jobs last month. This while there were actually around 20,000 more people working full time. So the job losses were almost entirely part-time positions, and the economy added full-time jobs.

So despite the often grim economic news reported daily, there are still opportunities out there going unfilled and still new ones being created all the time. That's something positive to think about as we kick off another week. (Because, as I said in a recent post, optimism and confidence are self-fulfilling prophecies, so staying positive can be a distinct advantage.)

- Peter Harris
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