London job vacancies drop by half, yet some sectors still struggle for workers

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After peaking in 2022, the number of job vacancies in the London area has dropped by almost half, new figures from Statistics Canada show.

But that doesn’t mean finding workers has stopped being an issue for local businesses, with thousands of jobs still going begging for bodies, an industry observer says.

According StatsCan, in the first quarter of 2024 there were 10,355 job vacancies in the London census metropolitan area, a region that also includes Strathroy, St. Thomas and portions of Elgin and Middlesex counties.

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That compares to 21,600 vacancies in the region in the second half of 2022.

Vacancies in London, as they did across the country, peaked after the COVID-19 pandemic, when businesses started to reopen as restrictions to slow the spread of the virus lifted and companies went on a hiring spree.

Since then, higher interest rates set by the Bank of Canada, which have slowed the Canadian economy, and population growth have helped bring those figures down, among other factors.

But despite the marked decline in the past two years, vacancies remain elevated, said Jamie Rudolph-Zbarsky, an analyst with Statistics Canada.

“I wouldn’t say necessarily that we have recovered,” he said. “If you look at employment, it’s higher than it was pre-COVID, so the employment rate has increased (but) the vacancies are still a little bit higher than they were in the past.”

Locally, the number of job vacancies has dropped in the past year by one of the fastest rates in western Ontario at 27.7 per cent. That compares to the 25.1 per cent decline in Kitchener-Waterloo and Barrie, the 19.7 per cent drop in the Windsor-Sarnia area, and the 19.2 per cent drop in the Hamilton-Niagara Peninsula region.

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But some sectors continue to have a hard time hiring new employees.

Health care-related occupations lead the pack in this category, with more than 2,100 jobs available in the first quarter of the year in London.

That’s followed by about 1,860 vacancies in sales and service occupations and 1,640 in education, law and social, community and government services jobs, Statistics Canada reported.

Work shortages in certain sectors and job-seekers not having the necessary experience for some of the available positions are among the reasons why some jobs remain vacant and businesses continue to report difficulty filling positions, said Deb Mountenay, interim executive director of the Elgin Middlesex Oxford Workforce Planning and Development Board.

But so is the large number of jobs available, which can lead to businesses and workers missing each other, Mountenay said.

“Businesses are still very actively looking for employees,” she said. But “we track 41 different job boards in the London economic region alone.

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“So, that becomes part of the challenge, when businesses are actually posting and people are actually looking, there is a greater possibility of missing what would have been a good opportunity for both parties.”

Mountenay said while job vacancies may be trending in the right direction, the London region still needs to continue to work to attract talent to the region with big projects, such as the Volkswagen battery plant in St. Thomas, looming.

“At the same time, we’ve still got the people who are reaching 65 that are going to be exiting the labour force,” she said. “We’re still seeing just the tail end of the baby boomers that will still be exiting, so that will also be a bit of a challenge.”

jjuha@postmedia.com

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