Canada's economy added 39,800 jobs last month, as a surge in hiring for full-time work pushed the jobless rate down to its lowest rate on record, 5.1 per cent.
Statistics Canada reported Friday that more than 135,000 people found full-time work during the month. That more than offset a decline of 96,000 part-time positions.
The jobless rate inched down for the third month in a row, settling at the lowest point it's been since comparable record-keeping began in 1976.
May's hiring surge adds to the expansion that Canada's economy has seen in recent months. After shedding more than three million jobs in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic,
Canada's job market has slowly and steadily recovered.
Booming demand for workers
By November 2021, Canada finally had the same number of workers it had before the pandemic. When May's numbers are included, it now has half a million more than it did then.
The balance between job vacancies and workers has almost completely shifted from one of imbalance to one where employers can't find enough people to work.
"As we commence the ritual of filling patios and hit the road for overdue vacations, employers continue to search for workers to meet heightened demand," TD Bank economist James
Orlando said of the numbers. "This has job vacancy rates at record levels, making it clear that the Canadian economy is operating beyond full employment."
Statistics Canada says the ratio of unemployed people to job vacancies has reached an all-time low of 1.2.
As the vice-president of human resources at The Canadian Brewhouse, a chain of restaurants with 42 locations across Canada, James Martyn knows first-hand how tight the labour
market is right now.
Like many hospitality business, Brewhouse shrank its operations in the pandemic, but in recent months the chain has started to ramp up again, to match consumer demand for dining out.
Even with competitive wages and regularly scheduled raises, Martyn says it's a challenge to maintain and grow staffing, but he's pleased the chain has managed to hire about 800 new
people in the past two months, including at a brand new location in Victoria which boasts the largest rooftop patio in Western Canada.
"A lot of people are, even if they are continuing to go back to work, they're going for places where they can work from home," he said in an interview. " I don't think there's anything inherently
wrong with that. But it does challenge business operators, especially if you have a business like hospitality where there is no such thing as work from home."
