Ahead of the Christmas shopping season, Ontario retailers are growing anxious as the number of vacant jobs due to a lack of workers is increasing. Statistics Canada figures reveal that in only one year, the number of job vacancies in Ontario increased by 46.4 percent- from 264,530 during the second quarter of last year to 387,235 for this year’s equivalent period. The number of payroll employees in Ontario increased by 506,895 in a year, a rise of almost 8.6 percent. The labour shortage is also deteriorating rapidly in Canada’s most populous province, with job vacancies climbing 15 percent from the first quarter to the second quarter of this year.
