Metropolitan Monthly Monitors: Metro Help-Wanted Index April 2011

Although employment dipped slightly in Canada in March, the economy still created over 80,000 jobs in the first quarter, and most Canadian cities enjoyed gains. Employment climbed in 19 of 27 census metropolitan areas (CMAs) in the first three months of the year. And according to Signal49 Research’s Metro Help-Wanted Index, local job prospects remain bright. The near-term employment outlook is up in 22 CMAs, stable in 2, and down in only 3. The outlook is particularly strong in the West, where prospects are up in seven of eight CMAs and stable in the other. In addition, the indicator of labour market tightness—a ratio that measures the number of unemployed workers to the number of job openings—remains below the Canadian average of 2.3 in every Western Canadian CMA except Abbotsford, a sign of tight labour markets. In Ontario, near-term prospects are up in 10 of the 11 CMAs. The exception is Oshawa, where prospects are down. The two other Canadian CMAs where prospects are down are in Quebec—Trois-Rivières and Sherbrooke.