body { background: #FFF; }
Canada education sector toughest job market
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Unemployed workers in Canada's educational services sector faced the toughest job market in the country in the July-September period, according to a new Statistics Canada report on Tuesday.
For every 10 unemployed workers in education, there was just one vacancy, the agency's new data on job vacancies in the three-month period showed. The second worst sector was construction where the ratio was 5.1.
The data is not seasonally adjusted to account for layoffs during the summer months but Statscan said the ratio had been high in the education sector for earlier months of 2011 as well.
Of the 10 largest industrial sectors, wholesale trade and health care and social assistance had the lowest ratio, meaning there were fewer job hunters competing for each position.
Canadian businesses had, on average, 248,000 job vacancies in the period with an average ratio of unemployment to vacancies of 3.3.
The national vacancy rate, defined as the number of vacant positions divided by labor demand, was 1.7 percent.
Because Statscan released the job vacancy data for the first time, using a three-month average, there was no historical comparison available.
(Reporting By Louise Egan; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)