Returning to the job vacancy slide, the number of unfulfilled vacancies provides another potential measure of unmet labour. This is a measure that StatsCan had not collected for many years, but with funding from HRSDC for the development and initial collection in January 2011, we began collecting information on job vacancies, fulfilling a critical data gap, as identified by the advisory panel on labour market information.
The vacancy statistics complement the LFS data by providing insight into whether the supply of labour is matched by the demand for labour in terms of geography and sector. The job vacancy rate is defined as the number of vacant positions divided by the total labour demand; that is, vacant positions plus payroll employment.
In the three months ending in September 2011, the national job vacancy rate was 1.7%. This is the time period for which we have the most recent data, and it's a very new survey. As we saw in the previous graph on employment, the sector of mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction has been the fastest growing in employment since July 2010. This is reflected in the overall labour demand. As can be seen in this graphic, mining, quarrying, and oil and gas has the highest vacancy rate, at 4%.
The category of professional, scientific, and technical services had one of the highest vacancy rates, at 2.5%. The health sector is slightly above the Canadian average.