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People looking for work in the London region have fewer choices as the number of job vacancies in the area continues to decrease, new figures from Statistics Canada show.
There were 9,200 jobs available in the second quarter of 2024 in the wider London metropolitan area, representing a year-over-year decrease of 11 per cent, the federal agency says. More notably, the number of job vacancies has been slashed by more than half from its peak of 21,600 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The local decline comes as the London region is also seeing its unemployment rate creep up – sitting at 6.5 per cent in August – while its population also is growing, signalling soft hiring conditions at the moment.
“Overall, we have sort of seen (that) while employment has gone up, the rate it’s going up hasn’t been as high as it was previously,” said Jamie Rudolph-Zbarsky, an analyst with Statistics Canada. “So overall, it does seem like the demand for labour is slowing (and) the fewer vacancies would make it harder for people to find jobs.”
The London area’s decline in job vacancies follows national trends, with Statistics Canada reporting on Tuesday the number of jobs available across the country has gone down for eight consecutive quarters.
Other neighbouring economic regions in Ontario, however, have seen sharper drops in recent months, Rudolph-Zbarsky said. Here are are the year-over-year drops:
- London area: 11 per cent
- Windsor-Sarnia: 37.5 per cent
- Kitchener-Waterloo-Barrie: 26 per cent
- Hamilton-Niagara Peninsula: 27.6 per cent
“In London, we noticed the educational services (jobs) were high this quarter, so they had quite a few vacancies overall, and that sort of counteracted some of the other sectors that had decreases in vacancies,” Rudolph-Zbarsky said.
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