Human Resources committee  Certainly.

Human Resources committee  To partially address your point, there are some sectors, for example, professional, scientific and technical services, the industry category that includes the tech sector, that have shown a significant employment increase compared with prepandemic levels. There are a few others, but I would want to verify them.

Human Resources committee  I can respond to that. The data we report in the labour force survey released every month is what we call “seasonally adjusted”. In other words, we've taken steps to remove the impact of seasonality. When we say that employment in that sector is higher than pre-COVID levels, you can take that as being in addition to any seasonal effects.

Human Resources committee  I don't have those details at hand. There are other colleagues in Stats Canada who are responsible for the building permit data, but we'd be very happy to dig up that information and report back to you.

Human Resources committee  I can respond to that question. We'd be happy to provide you with that information. I don't have the details at hand, but we can easily provide that information.

Human Resources committee  I'm sorry, I don't have that information offhand. We would have to go back and look at it.

Human Resources committee  The only constraint on sharing that information with you is the sample size, the number of observations that we have. Beyond that, we'd be happy to give you as much detail as we can.

Human Resources committee  I'm sorry; I forgot to unmute, and I hope I'm following the right protocol by responding in English on the right channel. We will have a look at our ability to break down that observation by province and by industrial sector. Often what we do in our analysis is to look at national level findings as signals or indications of what's happening in the broader labour market.

Human Resources committee  Maybe I'll take a step back and explain the data that Madame Bégin just referred to as new data that we've developed in the past several months using the labour force survey, but also additional information we had collected that allowed us to identify people with disabilities. Traditionally in Canada we've relied on the census of population and the Canadian disability survey to measure labour market conditions for people with disabilities.

Human Resources committee  Good morning, everyone. In response to your specific question, we can look at job vacancies since 2015 when the current survey was introduced. Yes, we do see an increase in vacancies between 2015 and 2019, and then a sharp acceleration from 2019 onwards in association with the pandemic.

Human Resources committee  We can point to several factors for the increase in vacancies. It could, for example, be due to a rapid reopening of an industry where there's an adjustment period required for matches to be made between available workers and vacancies. It may be an indication of normal economic activity where there's turnover and transition within an industry.

Human Resources committee  I wouldn't be able to say there's a predominant factor. Again, I'd repeat that it's very important to look at specific industry and regional factors and analyze a particular situation using job vacancy statistics, but also employment trends, unemployment trends and broader economic indicators.

Human Resources committee  It's a very good question. We don't have the ability to predict the future. What we do is closely monitor the situation month to month and year to year. We have seen a small decrease in vacancies over the late fall and winter period. Some of that will be associated with seasonality, and we'll have to interpret some of that decline with caution and see how things develop over the spring and summer.

Human Resources committee  Your question is asking me to speculate about the future, which is always treacherous. I can speak to what's been driving the balance between male and female in terms of the number of beneficiaries. One of the big factors is the differential impact of COVID-19 by industry. If we think of industries like retail trade, accommodation and food services, a higher proportion of employment in those industries tends to be amongst women.

Human Resources committee  We have that through the employment insurance coverage survey, and I could provide you the most recently available statistics on that. We can send that out to the committee after the meeting today. Unfortunately, I don't have at hand the very up-to-date numbers on that.