Statistics Canada reports fewer openings but steadier hiring and wages in third quarter of 2025
Canada’s labour market showed more signs of cooling in the third quarter of 2025, with employers posting fewer job openings even as overall labour demand and payroll employment edged higher, according to Statistics Canada.
In its latest Job Vacancy and Wage Survey release, Statistics Canada said job vacancies fell by 14,000, or 2.8%, to 492,500 from the previous quarter.
That marks the third consecutive quarterly drop after declines of 19,900 (‑3.6%) in the first quarter and 18,300 (‑3.5%) in the second quarter of 2025. Vacancies have now pulled back roughly by half since peaking at 985,900 in the second quarter of 2022, underscoring a sustained easing in hiring pressures.
Full-time, permanent jobs
The latest decline was driven mainly by full‑time and permanent roles. Job openings in full‑time positions fell by 11,200 (‑3.0%) in the third quarter, while part‑time vacancies were “little changed,” Statistics Canada said.
Permanent openings dropped by 12,800 (‑3.1%), compared with relatively stable numbers for temporary roles.
Year over year, the pullback is even more pronounced: Statistics Canada reported that full‑time job vacancies were down by 50,800 (‑12.3%) and part‑time vacancies by 5,100 (‑3.8%) in the third quarter compared with a year earlier. Permanent positions saw a decrease of 44,800 (‑10.7%) in vacancies, while temporary positions recorded a decline of 7,900 (‑8.0%).
Fewer long‑term vacancies ease hiring strain
One sign that hiring frictions are easing is the drop in long‑running open positions. Statistics Canada noted that the share of long‑term vacancies—jobs where recruitment has been underway for 90 days or more—“continued to trend down.” In the third quarter of 2025, 27.1% of job vacancies were long‑term, compared with 31.6% in the same quarter of 2024 (not seasonally adjusted), according to Statistics Canada.
“This indicates that in addition to having fewer job vacancies, employers had fewer difficulties filling available positions compared with previous quarters,” Statistics Canada said.
Despite the decline in vacancies, total labour demand—defined as the sum of filled and vacant positions—rose slightly. Total labour demand increased by 18,900 (+0.1%) in the third quarter, as lower vacancies were more than offset by a gain of 32,900 (+0.2%) in payroll employment.
On a year‑over‑year basis, the vacancy rate was down 0.3 percentage points, reflecting the broader cooling trend.
Health, trades and education lead declines by occupation
Job vacancies fell across most major occupational groups. In the third quarter of 2025, vacancies decreased in six of the 10 broad categories, led by occupations in education, law and social, community and government services; trades, transport and equipment operators and related occupations; and health occupations, according to Statistics Canada.
Vacancies in education, law and social, community and government services dropped by 3,200 (‑6.7%) to 45,100 in the quarter. Even with that decline, vacancies in this group remained “significantly above” their pre‑pandemic level of 36,000 recorded in the fourth quarter of 2019.
On a yearly basis, this group saw vacancies fall by 9,100 (‑16.5%) in the third quarter. Within it, the largest year‑over‑year declines were for early childhood educators and assistants (down 2,100 to 7,500); social and community service workers (down 1,700 to 9,100); and home support workers, caregivers and related occupations (down 900 to 4,700), Statistics Canada reported. Combined, these three occupations accounted for 46.7% of all vacancies in the education, law and social, community and government services group in the third quarter (not seasonally adjusted).
In trades, transport and equipment operators and related occupations, there were 87,700 job vacancies, a decrease of 3,000 (‑3.3%) from the second quarter, Statistics Canada found. Year over year, vacancies in this group were down 11,900 (‑11.0%), with notable drops among construction trades helpers and labourers (down 2,700 to 9,600), transport truck drivers (down 1,600 to 11,600) and material handlers (down 1,200 to 6,300). Some occupations within this category bucked the trend: vacancies for carpenters rose by 2,500 to 7,200, for residential and commercial installers and servicers by 600 to 2,300, and for facility operation and maintenance managers by 400 to 1,200 (not seasonally adjusted).
Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan see fewer openings
The cooling trend was not uniform across the country. In the third quarter of 2025, job vacancies decreased in Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan, while some Atlantic regions saw modest gains, according to Statistics Canada.
In Ontario, vacancies fell by 7,800 to 171,800, Statistics Canada reported. The decline was concentrated in the economic regions of Toronto (down 3,600, or 4.2%), Ottawa (down 1,900, or 10.8%) and London (down 1,100, or 11.2%).
Alberta saw vacancies decline by 3,800 to 59,500, with the Calgary economic region recording the largest drop—down 2,700, or 11.0%. Saskatchewan experienced a smaller decrease of 900 vacancies, bringing the total there to 15,800.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island moved in the opposite direction. Statistics Canada reported that job vacancies increased by 1,100 to 10,100 in New Brunswick and by 400 to 2,400 in Prince Edward Island in the third quarter of 2025. On a yearly basis, the job vacancy rate fell in 35 of 69 economic regions, with the largest declines in Parklands and North, Manitoba; Cape Breton, Nova Scotia; and Northeast, British Columbia. The biggest increases in vacancy rates were recorded in Edmundston–Woodstock, New Brunswick, and Southeast, Manitoba.
Wage offers still rising, but at a slower pace
Alongside fewer openings, employers’ wage offers for vacant positions are still climbing, but not as quickly as earlier in the year. “Growth in the average offered hourly wage for vacant positions has decelerated in 2025,” Statistics Canada said.
On a year‑over‑year basis, the average offered hourly wage for vacant positions was up 3.3% to $28.45 in the third quarter of 2025. That compares with growth of 4.5% (to $28.00) in the second quarter and 6.1% (to $28.90) in the first quarter of 2025. The agency noted that a “similar deceleration in wage growth was recorded for full-time and part-time positions as well as for permanent and temporary positions” (data not seasonally adjusted).
When compared with the broader workforce, wages for posted jobs are moving in line with overall pay trends. Statistics Canada said year‑over‑year growth in average hourly wages for all employees, as measured by the Labour Force Survey, was 3.3% in the third quarter of 2025—the same rate as the average offered hourly wage growth for vacant positions.
The data also show substantial differences in pay depending on educational requirements. In the third quarter of 2025, the average offered hourly wage for vacancies requiring a bachelor’s degree or higher was $44.00, more than double the $21.85 average for vacancies requiring a high school diploma or less.
Education and job openings
Education requirements are increasingly shaping where job opportunities are shrinking. Compared with a year earlier, job vacancies were down for all combined educational levels in the third quarter of 2025, Statistics Canada said.
The steepest decline was among jobs requiring a high school diploma or less, where vacancies fell by 27,300 (‑9.0%), almost half (‑49.4%) of the overall year‑over‑year drop in vacancies. Over the same period, the ratio of unemployed people with a high school diploma or less to each vacancy at that level rose from 2.3 in the third quarter of 2024 to 2.7 in the third quarter of 2025 (data not seasonally adjusted and excluding the territories).
Positions needing a trade certificate or diploma also saw fewer openings. Vacancies for these jobs declined by 8,300 (‑11.2%), while the number of unemployed people with this education level increased by 27,300 (+27.3%), according to Statistics Canada. The unemployment‑to‑job‑vacancy ratio for this group climbed from 1.3 to 1.9 year over year, but still remained lower than for jobs requiring other levels of education.
For jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree or higher, vacancies fell by 9,500 (‑11.0%) while the number of unemployed people with that level of education rose by 32,400 (+10.0%). As a result, the unemployment‑to‑job‑vacancy ratio in this group rose from 5.1 to 6.1 between the third quarter of 2024 and the third quarter of 2025.
