A recent report by Statistics Canada suggests the country's labour shortage largely depends on how much education you have, and the findings show it's not as pronounced in fields that require more education.
At the end of 2022, Canada had 942,000 job vacancies. That's two-and-a-half times as many six years earlier in 2016.
By reviewing data from the Job Vacancy and Wage Survey and the Labour Force Survey, statisticians clarified where those shortages were. The answer was that less-skilled jobs with lower pay were more likely to be vacant than positions requiring at least some post-secondary education.
At the end of the fourth quarter of 2022, 497,000 vacancies required a high school diploma or less, and only 296,000 unemployed job seekers with that level of education.
For those positions that required a Bachelor's degree or higher, there were 113,000 vacancies and 227,000 people looking for work.
The phenomenon was prevalent across Canada.
"Employers' difficulties to fill job vacancies requiring high levels of education cannot, in general, be attributed to a national shortage of highly educated job seekers or local shortages of such job seekers," concluded the report.
Instead, the report suggested those looking for a job may have different qualifications than those required, some sectors don't recognize foreign-acquired education or experience, or candidates lack the language skills needed to perform those duties.
"There is a potentially large enough pool of highly-educated workers at the national and local levels, but since these jobs are not homogenous, vacancies may arise because of a lack of concordance between the skills required for the job and the skills possessed by highly-educated job seekers," continued the report.
It also suggested that highly-educated job seekers may not know about available opportunities.
Where Canada does have a legitimate labour shortage is in those occupations that require a high school education or less. The number of vacancies far outnumbers job seekers, and employers might not offer competitive wages, benefits, and work schedules workers expect.
Statistics Canada looked at 16 metropolitan census areas in the study, including London and Windsor-Sarnia.
London had 21,600 total job vacancies and 25,000 people looking for work. The number shrinks to 2,500 open positions requiring at least a Bachelor's degree and 6,700 people with that level of education looking for a job.
Windsor and Sarnia had 13,700 total vacancies, with only 900 jobs available requiring a university diploma and 5,800 unemployed university graduates.