Metropolitan Monthly Monitors: Metro Help-Wanted Index February 2011

It was a good start to the year for the Canadian job market, as nearly 70,000 jobs were created in January. Most Canadian cities shared in the gains. Employment climbed in 21 of the 27 census metropolitan areas (CMAs). Signal49 Research’s Metro Help-Wanted Index suggests that local job prospects will continue to brighten. The near-term employment outlook is up in 16 CMAs, stable in 6, and down in only 5. The outlook is particularly strong in the West, where prospects are up or stable in all eight CMAs. In addition, the indicator of labour market tightness, a ratio measuring the number of unemployed workers to the number of job openings, remains low in the Western Canadian CMAs—a sign of tight labour markets. At the same time, near-term prospects are down in one Atlantic Canadian CMA (St. John’s), two Quebec CMAs (Québec and Trois-Rivières), and two Ontario CMAs (Kingston and Greater Sudbury).